Paid media now is all about automation and optimising to one point of conversion. This is great and works effectively if a conversion is just one touchpoint such as purchasing a product or generating leads, but what if your path to conversion has multiple stages, some of which may be offline, and all represent separate values.
How do you go about optimising for all conversion points?
Conversions in paid are tacked using tags that send data from website interactions to Google analytics. This data is then sent to Google ads which uses the data to attribute first interactions such and clicks and impressions to the relevant conversion. Google Automation then uses all the data available to optimise to the one conversion point that it has been set to work to. Google automated bidding can be set up with 8 different goals, these can be to get the most conversions for a set budget or work to a set target cost per conversion. But what if you have multiple conversion to optimise to?
End-to-end tracking
How do you make sure you are getting the most relevant conversions to help the other touchpoints in the conversion journey? The answer is end-to-end tracking. End-to-end involves tracking each touchpoint through the sales process but making sure that everything can be traced back to a single point. Tracking is easier now than it has ever been, many automation tools like Zapier allow data from CRMs to be added to Google Analytics daily and even hourly. Alternatively, these can be implemented by introducing more advanced methods such as push measurement protocol into GA from your CRM. This involves pushing the data from your CRM straight into GA, which gives you not just the original channel that someone has converted from, but also visibility on who the convertor was and data on their device, location and other valuable GA insights within your CRM.
Adapting your bidding strategy
This level of data insight allows for a more human steered version of Google automated bidding. Having the data accessible via your CRM enables you to have a better understanding of your audiences, so that when you are looking back to historical data you’ll be able to work out whether someone accessing the site via a mobile device in London on a Monday at 2pm, was worth more in the long run than someone on a tablet at 1am on a Sunday in Glasgow.
This information then allows you to change your targeting options to allow for more conversions in the locations where the data shows more valuable conversions occur, but also enables you to reduce spend in areas that may convert but don’t have a significant long-term value.
Understanding which conversions to work to is hard as each one has a unique value to your business goal. Through utilising the data available in Google Analytics alongside your automated bidding you can develop a much more granular, targeted strategy and make incremental changes to help increase the value of your conversions.
To this to the next stage, you should also think about non-last click attribution models and other channels that may have an impact on the value of an end conversion.
Keep an eye out for my next post where I’ll follow up with a guide on how to implement this, or if you’d like to talk through your strategy with me directly then feel free to reach out.
