The real meaning of any activity is the bottom line. Once everything is said and done, what remains is what counts. This is especially true for marketing tactics. And the end of the day, if a business has profits to boast about then that is a success right there. The word "success" is rather abstract though. What exactly does it mean? And how do you define it? The fact is that different people describe success differently. What is more, different businesses might have a completely different concept about what success means to them. Where one company considered itself a success if they hit a certain sales target, another might reach success when they are able to expand globally. But saying success is an abstract concept and settling for that doesn't work in the business world. As mentioned above, it is the bottom line that matters.

That is why when setting goals you need to make them measurable. Setting goals that are not measurable is like trying to capture a mirage; as soon as you think you are close enough, it will disappear. At the end of the day, you need have a good idea of where you are at the moment and where you want to get. Once you quantify the "where you want to get", you will know when you get there.

The same rule applies for PPC campaigns. To compete online is not easy and to do it without measurable goals is illogical. So technology has come to the rescue, as it usually does, and there are a number of softwares that marketers can use to see how they are doing with their campaigns. Forgetting to have measurable goals is like shooting in the dark. It is like saying, "I want some tea" versus saying "I want one cup of tea". With the second phrase you know Exactly what you are looking for. See the difference?

Once you have your measurable goals put into place, you need to see that these goals are being calculated properly. It is not uncommon to have marketers set goals about one thing and the data they are measuring might not exactly be apt for that kind of goals. For example, if your goal is to have a certain number of conversions on your site and you are looking at the clicks on your PPC, you might not get the right figure. Clicks do not necessarily mean conversions. And it is possible that there are visitors who did not come to your site through your PPC advertising. The thing is that there are some things that can be measured and others that can't be. A smart marketer would know the difference and work accordingly.

You can know how many times your ads were viewed on a website. You can also measure the number of clicks your PPC ad got. You can most definitely track conversions. And amongst other things, it is also possible to keep an eye on click fraud (and thank God for that!). All these are numbers that you can obtain from your Internet marketing tools but it is up to you to make sense out of these numbers.

For instance, think about the number of views that your ad got. At best you can only assume that the site visitor saw the ad on the page. You know the visitor was on the page where your ad is placed but there is no guarantee that he or she actually noticed the ad. Technology has come far enough to give a picture of visitors' actions on search engines and websites but that does not tell the whole story. There are other factors that affect the process.

Making your goals measurable is the closest you can get to knowing exactly how successful your campaign is. At best your tools can give you numbers and statistics but keep in mind that it is your job to make sense of the numbers. After all, there is only so much that a machine can do; the rest can happen only when humans decide to don their thinking caps.

About the Author

Jeev Trika is a principal at azentec, Inc.,. an e-business consulting firm, based out of South Bend, Indiana. He possesses extensive experience in sales methodologies and holds over 9 years of experience in assisting organizations with their online experiences. His professional services have been garnered by organizations like IBM Global Services, Siebel, Jordan Industries, Cayman Islands Government, and more. Jeev holds a Bachelors in Compute