If you don’t know what you are aiming for, how can you know if you’ve been successful? I’m not just talking about the big goals here, as I am sure every marketer knows the overall goal such as your business revenue, targets etc.
What I mean is when it comes to each marketing channel or even each activity, do you know what you are aiming for? Have you considered whether the activity is to drive awareness, build a relationship or to drive a final conversion?
Not all goals are equal in what they deliver and therefore should not be measured in the same way, but they should be measured.
These are all important aims and contribute to your end goal but how can we measure micro successes along the way to ensure we are on the right path and stay true to the business and our customers?
Search performance goals for 2021
So let me take search as an example - when conducting keyword research we ensure we have our customer hat on (the end-user), as opposed to our client hat, and we really focus on what the user’s intention is. We group our keywords against the sales journey, let me show you an example:
If we think of a user trying to book a holiday, early on in their journey they will be searching for things such as:
Sunny holidays in October
Where to go in October with the kids
Best holiday destinations for October
These are all early awareness, research-led terms - the person is unsure where they want to go and they are looking for inspiration. This is a fantastic time to build a relationship with that user and to demonstrate your authority via the content on your website.
Focusing on engagement early in the funnel or journey
At this point in the sales funnel, these particular terms will typically be high search volume, but a low likelihood of conversion. Therefore from a measurement perspective, we need to be looking at metrics that show us how engaged the user is and trying to find a way to data capture the person e.g. with a detailed guide on the location.
Support with PPC
This is also a great opportunity for your tracking pixels to kick in with a really tailored remarketing campaign.
Nurture for conversion to occur down the line
The crux of the matter here though is that we should not be measuring the effectiveness of traffic from these phrases based on holiday sales, that is going to come later if you nurture the customer in the right way.
So we then have our higher intent terms, where we are going to have a higher chance of converting the user, but the search volume will start to drop down. For example:
How long is the flight to
Weather in
Things to do in
Child friendly resorts
This stage is still research-led, but the user is much more sure of where they want to go and want they are looking for. This is a further opportunity to build a relationship and to demonstrate expertise.
Low search volume can be high opportunity
Then finally as the intent reaches its peak, the user is ready to buy/enquire we see search volume often drop to its lowest but our chance of conversion is much higher.
Best deal to
Luxury holidays in
Best all inclusive in
Best honeymoon hotels in
At this point our goal tracking and measuring should focus on sales/enquiries, however we should also consider the product we are selling here, look at softer engagement metrics and ways to data capture as it is not necessarily an immediate purchase with holiday’s - but the user is very close to booking at this point.
The right goal for the right stage of the journey
The dream when looking at the user sales journey is that if we really understand the different actions at different points we can ensure our marketing matches up. We can ensure we have data capture and remarketing in the right place, to automate the right emails or messages. We can hold the user’s hand whilst they make their decision all the while building trust in our brand because of our expertise. This is the holy grail of marketing.
The reset button here for many though is ensuring you are communicating the right CTA’s at the right time and therefore also measuring the right activity. We’ve seen it before when a client has been disappointed by performance in that the traffic has been there, but not the enquiries/sales but actually the optimised keywords were not sale generating keywords, therefore it was poor expectation management to expect sales.
At Reflect Digital we are extremely passionate about looking at the connected journey and understanding user behaviour to ensure your message is in the right channel at the right time. If you’d like to know more or to talk to one of our strategists get in contact.
