Digital marketers can be our own worst enemies.
After years of touting that we can track everything and get precise ROAS from digital marketing, the expectation is that we can continue to do so.
While digital marketing does offer a greater opportunity to reveal the ROI of specific strategies and channels, it sometimes feels like this traceability has overshadowed soft, Top of the funnel KPIs.
Don’t get me wrong.
Advertisers should still use metrics like ROAS, ROI, and LTV/CAC (Lifetime Value/Customer Acquisition Cost) as North Star metrics when allocating budget across channels and strategies.
But building the demand for tomorrow at the top of the funnel requires a different mindset that may make some marketers (let’s face it, their CFOs) uncomfortable.
The good news is that higher funnel programs affect conversion rates, and there are multiple ways to measure it.
In this article, you’ll learn what you need to know about impression-based KPIs, as well as native and paid tools you can use to measure the impact of impressions.
challenge
The buying experience has changed rapidly over the past decade, and marketers and leadership have not kept pace with buying behavior.
The root of the problem lies in the discrepancy between buyer behavior and attribution.
The reasons are as follows:
- Buyers are not in a straight line.
- Purchasing committees often drive decisions, not individuals (especially for B2B). This means that the ad must reach multiple people on the way to the final purchase.
- Users are more savvy, skeptical, and overwhelmed than ever. Therefore, the frequency of viewing powerful ideas is critical to building awareness, interest, and consideration.
At the same time, company leadership often makes decisions based on outdated attribution models, such as the last click that ignores the essence of buyer behavior.
So how do you show the value of top-of-funnel ads?
Conducting in-depth brand awareness research is certainly an option for large advertisers.
But for smaller advertisers or those who want to see results quickly, impression-based KPIs are a great way to optimize top-of-funnel ads.
Impression-based KPIs to know
If an impression is on its way to conversion, it has value.
Consider your own experience.
How many times have you seen ads influencing future decisions?
You may not have clicked on the ad.
It may take you a day to take action, but it clearly affects your thinking.
These advertisers cannot accurately quantify the value of impressions/views, but they know enough to know that it has value.
Quantifying what that value is can be tricky.
However, here are some key KPIs that should be included when evaluating the success of top-of-funnel ads:
Brand Search Impression Lift
Top-of-Funnel (TOF) programs increase brand awareness, which creates search demand.
Therefore, this is one of the best examples of the success of the TOF program
Engagement/CTR
Brands with more market awareness communicate their value proposition and differentiated CTR is higher.
A pre-TOF/Post-TOF analysis of CTR will provide insights into whether your efforts are paying off.
Engaged View Conversions
exist YouTube and display ads (using video in responsive ad units), an engaged view conversion is counted when a skippable in-stream ad is viewed for at least 10 seconds (or the entire ad if less than 10 seconds).
View-through Conversions
View-through Conversions Tells you that your ad was seen during the conversion process even though it wasn’t clicked.
While not as valuable as click-based conversions, it’s still valuable when evaluating the performance of lead campaigns where prospects haven’t yet interacted with you.
audience saturation
Reach, frequency, and audience saturation can be a good KPI if you have a well-defined audience.
Examples of defined high-value audiences include customer match lists, pixel-based retargeting lists, using search on google Setup and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) audiences.
This is less valuable for poorly targeted metrics, such as akin and looks like Or when using “Optimize” targeting.
In search, Impression share Can give you audience saturation insights.
Native tools to help you measure impression impact
Attribution is hard. And it’s messy.
No matter what salespeople tell you, there is no one-size-fits-all attribution solution—especially when you’re trying to quantify impression-centric KPIs.
But easy to breathe.
Here are five ways to measure impact using native tools:
- Add relevant impression-focused metrics (top) to your platform views, internal dashboards and customer reports. For example, show when TOF programs lead to a spike in brand impressions.
- Run a geo-retention test that activates the TOF plan in certain markets, but not in others. Then, assess impact based on market-level lead, pipeline, and revenue data, including all traffic sources.
- Create custom columns It combines click-through conversions and weighted view-through conversions to better understand the impact of a keyword or audience segment. Then, use that information to set target CPA bids.
- Leveraging Google and Facebook Lift Research Learn more about the incremental impact of your ads in a more automated way.
- Using Google Analytics User Groups, create “Public” and “Unlisted” groups and serve redirect ads to a group. Then, measure downstream KPIs to determine the impact of retargeting impressions.
Paid Tools to Measure Impression Impact
While other tools exist, I can talk directly to Google Marketing Platform products.both Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360 (GA360) Provide buyer journey report attribution > convert > Top Conversion Paths.
However, GA360 includes Google-based impression activity in these paths.
Another GMP product, Campaign Manager 360 (CM360), which provides impression data outside of the Google ecosystem.
Here, you can place impression tags on non-Google vendor URLs such as Twitter and Reddit to get a fuller picture of how impressions affect the buying process.
This can be valuable information when media planning, as the TOF program may not be trusted by checking click-based KPIs alone.
For example, one of our clients recently observed on Reddit that leads were underperforming.
We were thinking of cutting it, but we looked at the CM360 fueled picture Dashboard, seeing that Reddit was actually the first brand exposure (no clicks) 41 times.
The data shows that while there is ostensibly no funnel-related conversion activity, it is introducing people to the brand, who then click on another CM360-tagged link, which then converts.
in conclusion
Impressions of the right audience are valuable.
If you want to build a future-proof marketing program, you must generate demand through a TOF program that focuses on non-click conversion points.
While sometimes difficult to quantify, there are a variety of metrics you can use to help you determine whether a funnel or strategy is working.
In summary, you should:
- Identify impression-centric KPIs and their values.
- Communicate (and align with) stakeholders What success looks like throughout the funnel.
- make sure your Understand media mix, strategy and tactics Pass the above KPIs.
More resources:
Featured Image: H12/Shutterstock
