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Reporting on Digital Marketing Performance in a private world

Executive Summary In an increasingly private world, how do we as marketers prove the efficacy of our campaigns? With restrictions on reporting and tracking, the result is often declining ROAS and increasing CPA, which leads to knee-jerk decisions to decrease spends which can be at the detriment to brand growth. We need to update how […]

08th Feb 2022
Ffion Kelly Head of Paid Media 08th February 2022

Executive Summary

In an increasingly private world, how do we as marketers prove the efficacy of our campaigns? With restrictions on reporting and tracking, the result is often declining ROAS and increasing CPA, which leads to knee-jerk decisions to decrease spends which can be at the detriment to brand growth. We need to update how we view performance, judging each step along the purchase journey by the most relevant metric and using all the information available to us. Having a clear, easy-to-read marketing dashboard with tailored sections for each area of the funnel will communicate how each campaign is performing against a relevant KPI to understand the bigger picture, how campaigns work together and ultimately ease decision making. Get in touch for any more information. 

In a world that is fast-paced, impatient, and focused on the immediacy of results, we as marketers work harder than ever to prove the efficacy of our activity. We could have the cleanest structure, the most engaging ads, the most laser-pointed targeting but what is the point if we can’t effectively communicate the purpose and the results of these campaigns to the key decision-makers? We are now facing a turning point in digital marketing – we have been spoilt for years with the ability to report on direct response, now as the importance of privacy is emphasised, we are slowly but surely losing the ability to accurately report and do our activity justice.  

The knee-jerk response to seeing ROAS decline, and CPA inflate is to pull media budget, focus only on those campaigns that are generating the highest ROAS and hope the brand will continue to grow. This will result in short-term gain but a long-term decline. These campaigns are likely to be retargeting or brand search, reaching only those who are already aware of you, your customer growth will decline and eventually so will the performance of even these bottom of funnel campaigns. It’s the equivalent of seeing your football team losing and substituting all players for strikers, then wondering why you’re conceding more goals than ever. Each member of the team has a part to play, some less obvious than others, in the same vein as each type of marketing campaign has its role contributing to the overall growth of a brand. Some, like strikers, will take all the glory and generate the strongest direct response, whereas others, like the solid defender, will set the team up for success without being so closely linked to the result.  

So, what does this mean for reporting? We need to ensure that we are measuring each campaign by the right metrics. Just as we would measure a striker based on their score rate, and a goalie on their save rate because measuring them on the same skills would be counterintuitive. We’ve laid out our top metrics for each stage of the marketing funnel.  

Getting the Most out of your Marketing Funnel

TOF – Top of Funnel campaigns:

What is the role of an awareness campaign?

To generate meaningful brand awareness to a relevant audience, increasing the size of the potential customer base.

Macro KPI

The overall goal of these campaigns is to see an increase in good quality traffic to the website.

Micro KPIs

Users on site

  • Measure the uplift of traffic visiting the website

Website behaviour metrics

It’s important not to just measure the volume of users. It’s easy to increase traffic, but the key is ensuring it is high-quality traffic by qualifying the volume against website behaviour metrics:

  • Bounce rate
  • Time on site
  • Goal completion (e.g. Newsletter sign up)

Ad platform metrics

CPC

CTR

Post engagements – For social campaigns, for example, measure the highest intent engagements such as:

  • Post saves
  • Post shares

Increase in brand search

  • Blend organic and paid searches together and understand if there is an overall increase in the volume of brand searches

MOF – Mid Funnel Campaigns:

What is the role of a middle of funnel campaign?

  • Engage with warm audiences to increase consideration of purchase

Macro KPI

An increase in shopping behaviour

Micro KPI’s

  • Checkout Initiated
  • Add to baskets
  • basket value
  • Cost per add to basket
  • Click to add to basket rate

BOF – Bottom of Funnel Campaigns:

What is the role?

  • Drive conversions from users who have been guided through the funnel and are showing high intent

What we want to see?

  • An increase in purchases and revenue
  • KPI’s
    • Conversion rate
    • ROAS/CPA depending on your business objective
    • LTV
      • Measuring lifetime value of a customer allows a longer-term view of the effectiveness of marketing. A cost per acquisition higher than target will be justified if that customer returns frequently and becomes one of your most valuable customers.
    • Purchase/revenue increase
      • It’s important to not solely measure this on a last interaction basis. If that is the attribution model being used, also measure assisted purchases, and overall website purchases to understand wider influence and correlations.

DO YOU WANT TO PUSH YOUR DIGITAL GROWTH STRATEGY FORWARD? LET’S CHAT.

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