Carlos – Making the match type more precise is a great piece of advice, especially as you get into keywords with more and more traffic. For highly competitive terms I often go so far as to use exact match.

Unfortunately you’re also right about many SMBs not having analytics. A lack of actionable data is a common problem I see as well. I often have to rely on intuitive guesses (see my response to Luke above) to even have a ballpark conversion rate to start from. PPC can be tough for the SMB.

Another problem with new SMB is that they often don’t even have Analytics in place, so you don’t know the conversion rate or anything.

But if they do have, sure it helps for the calculation!

Cheers

Sure. Sounds like you are saying you just need to dig a little deeper to find that type of info. The SMB owner, who is removed from sales, may not have the answer. That’s insightful. Thanks!

Usually I will ask a few hypothetical questions. I ask “If you got 10 [insert channel] leads, how many would turn into sales?” for each of their various channels. While it’s basically just a gut reaction on the question, in the absence of data, intuition is probably your best shot at getting a benchmark.

And sometimes you need to be asking the sales team or the customer-facing employees (the receptionist at a dentist office for example) to get this type of info. Sometimes the marketing director/manager is too far removed to actual closing that he/she may not have the best intuitive feel on the issue.

I think the part that would be hardest is getting a conversion rate from the SMB. Many SMB don’t have a clear cut “goal” on their site, track their goals, or do much with internet marketing period.

What would you suggest if the SMB doesn’t know their conversion rate?