Conversions in payment methods come in many forms.
Learn how to define a conversion for the campaigns and the value of the PPC marketing dollar.
Once upon a time, a PPC conversion was simple.
It meant that someone completed an action that he wanted, which generally meant a sale.
However, as marketing became more sophisticated and measurement capabilities evolved, the term “conversion” became more complex and nuanced.
Have conversions changed!
Instead of tracking a particular conversion, marketers today focus on many actions desired by users.
These “micro-conversions” allow marketers to know whether or not they are on the right track with their audience.
For example, marketers may have measured purchases in the past.
They now measure other actions, such as joining an email newsletter or attending a webinar.
It is a natural evolution as the marketing ecosystem grew.
When the paid search was the only tactic in town, knowing where the traffic was coming from.
Users flocked to search engines and websites.
Usually, they did it on a desk.
There are tablets, phones, search engines, and social media platforms.
Users interact with all of them.
Marketers must decide which combination of all of these things gives them the best brand growth.
Conversion rates by goal:
Typically, a conversion goal falls into one of these categories.
Leading generation:
The conversion goal of these efforts is to generate a lead.
It can be in the form of an email, phone call, or a similar action that indicates that a user is interested in what a company offers.
Platforms have even evolved where campaigns and ad formats can achieve this without even taking the user to a website.
Campaign goals like lead generation on Facebook make this easy for brands.
YouTube recently opened this option for everyone who serves ads using the feature that was already available in Google Ads.
Getting leads is generally a micro-conversion, that is, they ultimately get the lead, to sell something.
This can be through email promotion or a follow-up phone call from the company.
Purchase conversions:
Typically associated with e-commerce, a purchase conversion is exactly what it sounds like: someone bought something.
However, many accounts will also consider other actions to determine the overall value of a campaign.
For example, micro conversions can also be posted as “Add to cart”.
Determining the value of a conversion:
This is where things got more nuanced as marketing matured.
There was only one conversion tag.
It was placed on a brand’s website and was only activated when the action took place.
Usually, it was on the page of a successful purchase or after a lead was submitted.
Over time, platforms evolved to have their own measurement pixel.
This means that instead of being a conversion that triggered a tag loaded on a “success” page, the platform could now “see” everything a user does.
It would track all the movements of users on a site.
And the advertiser could specify which actions or URLs meant a conversion occurred.
This opened up a whole new world of tracking for advertisers because they got a deeper insight into user action.
It made tactics like retargeting more impactful because the ads that followed users on the internet were more specific than what they did on the website.
All that tracking makes it unclear what the value of a conversion is.
It fluctuates according to the purpose of each campaign.
Lead Gen Conversion Value:
A potential customer does not mean a sale and, in fact, one can lose a lot of information upfront to determine the overall value.
Lead generation is typically for sales processes with custom quotes that cannot be done entirely online.
This can be a hindrance to easily seeing the value of a track.
Cost per lead doesn’t matter, because there is no profit!
Lead generation is a delicate balance between paying the right amount for a lead based on the outcome of a likely sale.
Customer relationship management platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot and others will extract data that reflects where the user came from when they submitted their information as a lead.
As the sales team works with those leads, the pipeline will begin to show averages of what the sales production is.
There are many ways to calculate ROI in these situations.
Purchase conversion value:
Although it may seem that the purchase is simpler, it also has its own nuances.
In many situations, an ad acts as the initial way for a user to discover a brand or land on a website.
Most e-commerce advertisers use remarketing ads to follow users and close the sale.
Those retargeting ads will generally get the credit for the sale.
The first thing to consider in conversion value is: how much is being spent on both funnel ads and remarketing ads.
If advertisers simply believe that remarketing ads are driving all conversions and turn off the top of the funnel, remarketing ads have fewer users to convert to buyers.
Another part of the buying image is the lifetime value of a customer.
Conversions without an attributable source:
Here’s the marketing trick: not everything can be measured.
- It is simply not possible to know why all the conversions occurred.
- And even when someone has to get closer to solving it, things like seasonality, holidays, elections, and competition come up – it’s an ever-changing world.
- Despite having more data than ever, it does not create a perfect absolute measurement system.
- This is where the good old-fashioned correlation and intuition data come in.
- That could mean that those channels are contributing to brand awareness.
- Pay attention to those nuances.
- Marketing is a machine with many parts and one cannot see all of them.
- Experience will play a role in the money to invest.
- Ultimately, what to get as conversions.