How Do Your Visitors Get Through The PPC Customer Journey?

Peter Sharkey on 1 st of Dec 2016
Customer Journey Advertising

Customer Journey Advertising

Editor’s note: This marketing infographic is part of KlientBoosts 25-part series. We’re super excited to partner with them so you can enjoy a new gifographic once a day in your inbox. You should subscribe here. It’s not just the volume of conversions that matters in your PPC campaigns, but also where your visitors came from and what enticed them to convert that’s important. Which path did your visitors take to get to that conversion? You wanna make sure you’re giving the right credit to the right conversion path, so you can figure out which campaigns did all the heavy lifting, and which assisted. To figure out your own visitors’ PPC customer journey, Autopilot and KlientBoost have teamed up to bring you some insights you can take advantage of today. ppc-customer-journey

Visitors coming in from display

Visitors that come in through your display network campaigns (not retargeting) are likely to be colder prospects that were drawn to your ad while looking for something else. They’re likely to be in the awareness stage at the top of the conversion funnel:

Full marketing funnel

Colder leads at the top, warmer leads at the bottom of funnel

Although you might think these cold leads aren’t as significant because they don’t lead directly to conversions and purchases on your landing pages, _they are still valuable in assisting in conversions__. _ Display network campaigns can still play an important role in the success of your overall ad campaigns. To access the assist conversions info in Google Analytics you click Conversions > Attribution > Model Comparison Tool. The report looks like this:

Model comparison tool

Display ads in the report show up on the third line

Don’t simply pause your PPC display campaign because it’s not showing the greatest stats for the last click conversion attribute. In this example above, the display campaign accounts for the third largest amount of _assisted conversions_.

Visiting video viewers

Moving one step down the conversion funnel, visitors who come in from video views are a bit warmer in comparison to those generated through display. Video ads speak to the opinion stage of the PPC conversion funnel, where visitors are formulating ideas and surface-level options. The amount of ad spend on video advertising has been increasing and the trend is expected to continue:

Video ad spend

Quite a significant increase by 2018 (Image source)

Video ad spend is gaining traction, likely because video engagement can be measured as a _percentage of video watched__. _ This means there’s a lesser chance of someone accidentally clicking on your video ad in comparison to display ads. The intent of the visitor that clicks on your video ad is likely to be higher, too. You can even try retargeting various audiences in your AdWords and Facebook campaigns based on the percentage of video watched.

How specific can you get with social?

Let’s get even warmer and go further down the PPC conversion funnel into the consideration stage. Advertising across social platforms can be an effective method in this stage. That means taking your audiences and diving into deeper levels of demographics, behavioral segments and interest categories. In Facebook, you can create campaigns with specific custom audiences in each ad set. This is an effective way to chase after audiences that reflect the visitors out there who are already converting on your landing page or ecommerce site. You can reference 49 Facebook Ad Targeting Tips to create custom audiences with parameters that looks like this:

Facebook targeting

Target specific locations, age, gender and location (Image source)

The more specific you get, the more targeted your social audience will be.

Search advertising draws in the warmest of leads and prospects in the PPC conversion funnel, simply because visitors are typing in what they’re looking for. When visitors are inputting their own search terms into search queries, they’re typing in their actual need. At this point in the conversion funnel, visitors know what they need and are in the preference stage. The last thing they need to do before the golden purchase or conversion is to decide on which option to go for. But what about the conversion rates and sales rates for those keywords? Given this scenario, you would think keyword 1 is performing better:

Keyword comparison

_Higher conversion rate and lower cost per conversion. Makes sense…right? _

Not so fast. **Beware of the micro funnels within the PPC conversion funnel. ** There are cases where micro funnels are happening, like for lead generation and SaaS companies, where sales rates is more significant than tracking conversion rates. Here’s what I mean:

Keyword comparison part deux

Now keyword 2 is performing best

Search network campaigns shouldn’t be treated with a single CPA goal because different sales rates and different micro funnel stages are happening within your visitors’ search campaigns. For example, visitors from different stages of the micro funnel can be using keywords and search terms that still apply to your search campaigns. Here’s an example of three different stages within the micro funnel:

Microfunnel example

Still within the search stage of the larger conversion funnel

It’s important to consider both the micro funnel as well as the broader PPC conversion funnel so you can balance the conversion rates with the sales rates accordingly.

Attribution modeling and retargeting

Attribution modeling can help you to better understand different touch points in a conversion path. It’s a better way to understand where credit is due, when it comes to analyzing your different marketing channels. Here’s an example of how credit is spread evenly across different marketing channels in the default mode versus by interaction and touch points per channel:

Attribution modeling

More accurate credit percentages per channel with attribution modeling (Image source)

Each type of attribution model assigns different types of conversion credit in the various stages of the customer journey. Here’s a screenshot of a side by side comparison of some attribution models you might see in your Google Analytics account:

Linear attribution models

Compares last impressions, first impressions and linear attribution models

This concept also applies to retargeting your audiences. Be wary of the various paths that your visitors can take on their journey to a first ad impression when analyzing intent based on impressions, ads clicked and URLs visited. This info could be completely unrelated to another visitor, so be sure to test out different attribution models to find out which campaigns are assisting other campaigns.

Is the conversion the final destination?

The journey doesn’t stop at the conversion. You need to see the click all the way through (pun intended) to see if the conversion turned into a money-generating sale. The final step in the PPC conversion funnel is the purchase stage, which may not always be the same as the conversion stage. For ecommerce sites, the conversion typically _is _the sale, so you’ve likely already hit your golden conversion if that’s the case. For lead generation or SaaS companies, the conversion doesn’t become golden until it’s an actual sales success. How do you find out if your conversions are actually making you money? Tie it back to your sales success by using tools like Google’s ValueTrack parameters. With sufficient traffic volume, you can insert this data into your destination URLs and use hidden tracking fields to uncover more sales insights. It’s an effective way to find out which conversions are turning into actual sales.

Closing thoughts

Take a deeper dive into understanding your visitors’ PPC journey. With these six concepts, you can analyze various reporting systems that give you a more accurate picture of how and where your visitors are in the conversion funnel. By honing in on the customer paths that convert the most, assist with converting the most and make the most sales, you can tailor your campaigns to drive more sales, and hence, more revenue. Ready to uncover more insight into your PPC customer journey?

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