Arjun Dangi
Data Analytics | Performance Marketing | Marketing Analytics
Ultrahuman
LinkedIn: Arjun Dangi
In a nutshell, "performance marketing is driving business outcomes through data-driven decisions."
Urghh! Everyone says that. Every first line of the performance marketing article starts with that phrase. Tell me something new. Don't you worry; we got your back.
We are here to break down the 3 key concepts with consumable insights and actionable forms of knowledge that you can immediately implement at your work. To set the expectations right and save you valuable time, this specific article will dive into a broad understanding of performance marketing objectives, setting up campaign KPIs, and how to track those KPIs in the best possible way. We will not be diving into targeting and creative strategies in this article. That will be an article for another day.
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We will keep it short and crisp. The key questions that we will try to answer in this article are -
- What are the various objectives of performance marketing campaigns?
- How should you measure the campaign performance by tracking key KPIs?
- How to look at the correct data and optimize campaigns?
Sounds good? Read on.
Why is campaign objective the most important, and how can it be set up right?
Every performance marketing campaign should start with a specific objective. Your objective will decide what results you want to achieve with that dollar bill. In turn, it will define your KPIs.
Your objective could be anything: creating brand awareness, driving website traffic, lead generation, and purchase. And If you put this in an order - brand awareness -> driving website traffic -> lead generation -> purchase, it defines the user journey or user funnel. Usually, user journeys are more complex. You might have checkout initiated, add to cart, email journeys, app notifications, community reach outs, etc., and it just makes things interesting. But don't get overwhelmed. Start with the most basic funnel steps and keep building on top of that.
Most first-time marketers miss out on the critical outcome you should select based on your users' stage. Say, if you have 100k organic website visitors, you may go for lead generation or purchase. However, if people are unaware of your product/services in the market, you should start with brand awareness and building your traffic first, or increasing app installs. Then, of course, you can collect the user's email when they land on your website while promising users something in return (such as a weekly newsletter, free e-books, etc.). The best strategy is to use a mix of objectives and push users to the next action in the funnel. You can segment your campaigns under awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Insight
Facebook recommends having 50 conversions per week for running a conversion campaign, and Google recommends 30 conversions in the last 30 days. Yeah, they are pretty far from each other. We know. Conversion is any action you want the user to take on your website or app (Such as signing up, watching videos, or purchasing). You can set these events up using Facebook Pixel or GTM.
Which KPIs to track for your performance marketing campaign?
Your campaign objective will define your key KPIs for a campaign. For example, for a purchased campaign, you should track CPA (Cost per action) and volume of purchases, but for a brand awareness campaign, you may track impressions, CPM, and ad frequency. If you are running a traffic campaign, it can be CTR, CPC, or Cost per landing page visitor. Each different marketing channel has a different setup for campaign strategy, and you should pick your objective carefully before hitting that publish button.
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Compare these KPIs with industry benchmarks and your past campaign learnings. It will give you the confidence to explain those KPIs numbers during your discussion with the boss or agencies. Damn those KPIs. They are hard to hit but nevertheless essential to track.
How to track those KPIs easily?
You often look at platform data to analyze your campaign performance, but that's not enough. You should leverage MMPs (Such as Adjust, AppsFlyer, etc.) for app funnels and UTMs to track end-to-end website funnels. The word is that UTMs are the source of dopamine for a performance marketer. Setting the proper tracking will require your developer's input. They will need to ensure multiple pages of your website forward UTMs to the next page.
Ensure that your third-party integrations, such as Typeform and Shopify, understand the UTMs and save them with every action. It will help you to look at the true source of the data. There have been observations about the significant difference between registration numbers over ad platform and Typeform data due to iOS 14.5 limitations. Ideally, you should look at both platform numbers and your backend tracking using MMPs and UTMs. You would not want your total sales to go higher than the actual sales because you are claiming purchases from other channels at your organization by looking at just platform data. The attribution model will help you to understand this concept better, and you should still look at conversion numbers from both the places - Ad platforms and Backend attribution.
Tip: If you just have a website sales funnel, you can use marketing API connectors using easy to setup 3rd parties tools such as DataZip or Mixed Analytics to build an end-to-end funnel (Right from impressions to purchase at the most granular ad level). It would give you the superpower to make all kinds of views to analyze any campaign with ease. For apps - the correct conversion setup on MMPs can help you achieve the same. We recommend getting MMPs data in your backend to have more control over creating actionable views.
Conclusion:
The end goal of performance marketing is to make revenue while making the user purchase the company's product or services while navigating them through the user funnel. A good understanding of choosing the right objective and KPIs to track and setting up the correct reports in place helps decision makers to move fast and make informed decisions while looking at the true source of the data. Sometimes platform or MMPs views are not enough to justify certain decisions, and one needs to spend a good time setting up the proper data pipeline with the help of tech, product, and analytics teams to navigate and build consumable reports and dashboards so that the more effort can go on optimizing the campaigns and less on manual reporting. It gives much freedom to take action at speed and rapid A/B experimentations. Nobody likes to wait for their campaign performance data to come a day later. Take our words for that.
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