Click-to-Conversion Audience Losses
An effective strategy most people execute horribly. Seriously...
In theory, multi-step campaigns, have lower costs than direct response ones. But most ad accounts neglect a key part of this strategy. Here's why and how to fix it:
- Why click-to-conversion campaigns often fail.
- The problem with unqualified traffic.
- Simple solutions to improve your campaign performance.
A common strategy with paid acquisition is to target with a click goal (ie get people to click on your ad), then retarget the people that clicked with a conversion goal campaign (ie get them to sign up).
In theory, the cost of the click campaign and conversions campaign to warm traffic is lower than the cost of a conversions campaign to cold traffic. It's a sound strategy - that's often executed horribly.
Explanation
What we find is, that after setting up the campaign most people don't review the analytics diligently and only a tiny percentage (0.05%) of clickers actually sign up.
- The click campaign appears to be doing well because the "clicks are cheap", but because 99.95% of users who clicked the ad are unqualified almost none of them convert in the next step of the funnel.
- Resulting in the multi-step conversion funnel does no better than a poorly optimized cold traffic campaign would. After 3 to 5 weeks, most people spend more on the conversions campaign (not advisable) or shut it down entirely.
This occurs when the searchers you're reaching with the click campaign are unqualified.
Problem: You waste time, energy, and money on a campaign that only does marginally better or worse than existing campaigns.
Simple Solution: Narrow the keywords in the click campaign. That means changing the match type of keyword from broad to phrase or exact. The goal is to target only searchers with high intent and not broad audiences with low intent, so that the warm audience you retarget is qualified to buy.
You might also want to reassess that your click campaign keywords are high-intent. Running with the Canva example:
- Never use topical keywords because the audience is too broad and hasn't shown they have intent: 'presentation tool', 'software for presentation'.
- Use action-based keywords that signify intent: 'create a presentation with ai', 'design presentation in 5 minutes'.
- Use buyer-based keywords that signify purchasing behavior: 'ai presentation tool pricing', 'ai presentation tool reviews'.
- Use competitor brand names and alternatives that signify problem-solution awareness: 'competitor brand alternatives', 'competitor brand g2 reviews'.
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