Engaging Your Audience: Bid rules that go Beyond the Conversion

engaging your audienceLet’s face it – Most of the time when we’re managing online campaigns, we tend to devote most of our focus to the “end goal” conversion metric, such as a transaction or lead. While it obviously makes sense to optimize campaigns to the primary metric that we tend to get evaluated on, marketers who focus solely on macro conversions as part of their campaign optimization  process are missing a significant opportunity to capture more volume and to ultimately drive more results.

In this post, I’ll explore three bid management strategies using Acquisio that can drive results even though they’re not end-conversion focused.

 

Optimizing upper-funnel campaigns towards engagement

Yes, conversions are important. But, as savvy online marketers know, not every visitor is going to be ready to convert on their first visit to your website. It’s unreasonable to expect keywords and campaigns that exist in the upper portion of your funnel to perform similarly from a conversion perspective as keywords and campaigns focused on the bottom of the funnel. So rather than treating them the same, I like to go beyond conversions and attribution data to focus on engagement.

Try adjusting your bids on upper funnel keywords based on metrics as pages per visit, or average time spent on site. Use your web analytics data to figure out what your site-wide average looks like for these metrics, and then take this data and incorporate it into your bid rule. Here’s an example of what this type of rule could look like in Acquisio, using data coming from Google Analytics.

Bid up keywords that drive a high percentage of new visits

Driving new customers who have strong lifetime values is a key component of growth. While most marketers tend to think that branded keywords drive repeat visitors while unbranded keywords drive new visitors, this isn’t always the case, particularly in the upper funnel as potential customers refine their queries as they do more research on your product or service. So, if customer acquisition is a goal, try bidding up keywords that bring in a high percentage of new visits. If you want to get really precise, try bringing in attributed revenue and conversions into the mix here as well.

Adjust keywords on “microconversions”

While sales or leads are generally going to be the“endgame”, think about other conversions that can indicate success. E-Mail signups, views of your “find a store” page, and white paper downloads are all examples of conversion points that indicate motion thru the buying cycle. So why not look at these conversion points as part of your bid strategies? Try looking at a blended conversion rate or CPA target across all conversion points, and again, you can use attribution data to quantify the value of each microconversion point.

So there you have it – three strategies that help you go beyond the final conversion point when optimizing your campaigns. By implementing these types of strategies into your optimization process, you can drive more volume at the top of the funnel while using other, more conventional CPA or ROAS-driven rules to handle the bottom of the funnel.

lgoldberg

lgoldberg

Lee Goldberg is the Co-Founder and President of Vector Media Group, a NYC-based digital agency focused on Search Engine Marketing and Website Development. Having worked with firms ranging from local startups to Fortune 100 companies, Lee specializes in Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Analytics consulting, Conversion Rate Optimization, and Paid Search Management, with a particular focus on campaign attribution.

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