Why Run Performance Marketing?
By implementing performance marketing, you can build a full analytics ecosystem that lets you determine the return on investment in advertising and make decisions based on real data, not guesswork. When we spend a budget on ads, we want to know exactly what impact it has on achieving our business goals (after all, that's why we run campaigns): to effectively deliver the goals that matter for our business, and ultimately achieve a satisfying return on ad spend.
What Should You Measure in E-commerce Campaigns, and What in Lead Generation Campaigns?
For e-commerce activities the matter is simple: you need to set up analytics so you can measure sales in the shop as accurately as possible. This lets you factor in margin and other costs to determine a real ROI (Return on Investment).
Calculating ROI for lead generation campaigns, however, becomes a bit more complicated. Lead generation campaigns usually focus on acquiring as many contacts as possible, where the conversion is a submitted form. In this case, though, neither the specialists running the campaigns nor the tools' own algorithms know which of these leads are more valuable in quality terms, and which are less so. So how can you improve the analysis and effectiveness of campaigns aimed at acquiring contacts?
Calculating ROI for Leads Acquired Through a Contact Form
One of the simpler ways to improve the analytics of such campaigns is to send a UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) along with the lead. This means that, besides the standard data collected through the form, such as first name, last name, phone number or email address, we also pass a parameter added to the link that lets us identify, among other things, the acquisition source (e.g. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn), the medium (paid, free), the campaign name, the term (e.g. a keyword) or other parameters. With this information, you can already analyse, in your CRM or a simple spreadsheet, which sources, campaigns or keywords generate more valuable leads. By updating leads with information about their status and sales value, you can also work out how much revenue is generated by individual channels, campaigns or keywords, and thereby calculate ROAS or even ROI.
OK, but how do you send information about the lead's value back to the advertising tools, so this knowledge reaches their algorithms and you get even better optimisation options? Advertising tools such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads create a unique tracking parameter added to links leaving the site, used to identify the campaign and other parameters. We call these unique parameters fbclid and gclid. Sending them along with the form and assigning them to the lead lets them serve as a direct link to the campaigns being run and to campaign attribution. Once you have this data linked together, you just need to use a CRM integration with the given advertising tool (if one exists), or build such an integration using tools like Zapier, and pass the lead's value from your CRM or Google spreadsheet this way. By implementing this kind of solution, the completed lead value is sent to the ad platforms, which passes on the conversion value and the ability to optimise ads based on it.
ROI for Leads Acquired Through a Phone Call
We've covered forms, great! But what if our website shows a phone number and some customers get in touch that way instead? Can a phone call be linked directly to a campaign, or even to a keyword or ad creative? Of course it can!
One method (which only works in Google Ads) is to use dynamic number insertion, swapping in a number that belongs to Google. Once implemented, this works as follows. A user who arrives on the site from an ad sees a Google phone number in the place where the company's normal phone number would be. When they call it, they're automatically redirected to the real number with no delay. At the same time, this event is automatically logged in the Google Ads panel, and by analysing the reports we can see which phone number called, how long the call lasted, and which campaign or keyword led to the visit and the subsequent call.
The second method (which works across all acquired traffic) is to implement a dynamic number insertion service using an external provider. This usually involves buying several, or a dozen or so, virtual phone numbers that belong only to us and swap with every site session, while also recording the UTM or even the fbclid/gclid. This lets us easily analyse the effectiveness of phone-call conversions, and, just as with form leads, send information about the lead's status back to the advertising tools.
Summary
Running campaigns in Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or using other advertising tools should always be preceded by setting up the whole analytics environment beforehand, so you can measure the effectiveness of your activities as accurately as possible. If you're not yet using solutions like these and would like a no-obligation chat about how to build an analytics ecosystem for your business, write to us. We'll know exactly how you found us 🙂
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