One of the most difficult challenges is tracking paid search performance via telephone calls for the small business. While a few will spring for a new 800 number or IVR system to get some of that information and train phone staff in its use, many cannot due to the workaday reality. Often the busy office environment means metrics go out the window in favor of just getting the order out, so the company continues to guess.

This is especially true for companies who are struggling to find their sweet spot in the paid search world. During the day-to-day chaos, few are thinking about the cost of each call - they just want to answer it and do their best to change the caller into a customer. If the staff is so busy, do you really think they’ll drill down and get the “how you found us” information accurately recorded. It doesn’t happen. Pay-per-call and click-to-call offer “embedded” tracking, but are plagued with inventory and adoption challenges. My friend Christine (CC: Nice to see you at SMX!) created a great post on Offline Conversion Tracking, which covers some of the same ground, and this issue has often come up in conference sessions.

As Greg Sterling points out, the vast majority of purchases are made offline, yet the tracking solutions are only just maturing, and others have a very healthy skepticism about some of the new solutions.

The real result of this is the “leaking” of marketing budgets that happens with a lack of tracking. The dynamics of the purchase cycle are mysterious, making strategic and tactical solutions little better than guesses.

I see basically four flavors of off-line conversion tracking from pay-per-click ads, and would like to introduce a hybrid.

anecdotal
customer question at point of sale, catalog IDs, coupons, offers
poor man’s IVR (multiple phone numbers)
cookied IVR
…and a hybrid…
cookied part number modification

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It appears that the Microsoft Content Ads are now generally available to everyone.

For Advertisers
Unlike search ads that are triggered by keywords a potential customer enters, content ads are triggered by certain words in articles or Web content. If you are bidding on those words, your ad might be displayed somewhere on the page.

And for Publishers
If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft’s publisher program, just complete their form to keep informed about new developments, invitations to participate in focus groups or feedback sessions.

First introduced in August to beta testers, the content network gives people more reach on the MSN family of networks.

To learn more, check out:

• Content Ads product info
• Content Ads FAQ
• Content Ads webinar

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In the spirit of the Google Adwords Individual and Yahoo Search Ambassador, Microsoft has started handing out invitations to join the AdExcellence accreditation program.

“Upon passing the exam, you’ll become a Microsoft adExcellence Member. As a Member, you’ll receive permission to exhibit the official adExcellence logo on your website and be included in our adExcellence Membership Directory. “

“Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program is our official accreditation program that gives advertisers the opportunity to become a Microsoft adCenter expert. The program offers both free training materials and a fee-based examination, thus providing our adCenter advertisers the ability to gain valuable adCenter knowledge and demonstrate their expertise. Over time, this program will evolve to include additional training materials and benefits for our accredited Microsoft adExcellence Members.”

I’ll be going through the exam shortly. Should be fun!

It seems everyone’s bending over backwards to optimize my pay-per-click campaigns for free these days. Google did it a couple of weeks ago, and now Microsoft Adcenter has chimed in. Can the PPC campaigns really offer good value to customers without conflict-of-interest becoming a problem? Or is it a “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” issue? In my opinion, clients are best served by a mix of marketing ideas, outside analytics, and design consultation that blends the pay-per-click element into a wider-angle view of a websites’ performance.

In my in-box today:

As a valuable member of Microsoft(R) adCenter, we’d love to help you reach out to more potential customers. That’s why we’re offering you up to 45 days of one-on-one assistance from an expert Media Specialist at no cost to you. It’s our way of saying “thank you” for your continued support

From keywords choice to copy style to the way you structure our search campaigns, the goal of our service offering is simple: to help you save time, potentially attract more customers, and maximize your ROI.

Our search experts will help you get the most out of your adCenter investment by helping you identify strategies to:

- Test your ad copy
- Identify your most successful keywords
- Expand your search terms
- Track your sales conversions
- And more…

PS: When is Microsoft going to roll out any kind of accredited program for professional consultants? I thought this was coming?

I think, starting today, the “Worlds Biggest Web Host” , 1&1, now offers built-in Google Site Map Tools in their Package-level domain lists, making it extremely easy to create a sitemap for any domain hosted with their services. Too Damn Easy. They’ve had such tools in their “marketing tools” before but now it’s much more “in your face” while you view your domain names in the hosting. The “standard” webmaster tool settings creates a very basic Google sitemap 0.84 schema, uploads it, and says “thank you” . Bam, it’s that easy.

You do not have to drink the Kool-Aid folks

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I noticed that Google is starting to estimate your likelihood of display for site-selection ads. Trouble is, anyone who does any level of CPM tuning will have different bids on many sites, and the estimate only seems to apply to the default. If they showed the estimate for individual sites, that might be useful. ” Display likelihood is estimated only at the ad group level. Similar estimates are not available on a site-by-site basis.” says Google.