– ROAS is not the only factor to consider in determining the success of an ad; the quality of the audience and the relevance of the customer journey are also important.
– Attribution software may not provide a complete picture of the customer journey and may overlook important variables.
– Focusing on data collection and optimizing the customer journey can lead to increased performance across all ads.Focus on data collection and customer journey mapping to drive the most revenue and improve ad performance.Brand: We need software to figure out our ecommerce attribution!
Me: You mean which ads are driving ROAS?
Brand: Yeah, that!
Me: Did you know that ROAS is actually a factor of how much revenue is generated from a sale, and that there are tons of factors that play into the success of an ad? Most of them happen after the click, so all things being equal, what you’re actually looking for is which ad is driving the highest quality audience in combination with the most relevant customer journey that tracks their individual needs while making a purchase.
Brand: Huh?!?
Me: Yeah, turns out software doesn’t really point out the gaps in your customer journey. So, all that attribution software in the world is actually ingesting limited information based on the customer journey that you’re showing to people on your website.
Brand: But what about all those fancy touchpoint things?
Me: Do you have context for any of those actions?
Brand: Uh, yeah, they loved our email!
Me: (rolls eyes) It’s actually possible for you to increase ROAS by focusing on your customer journey and thus making all your ads perform better. This may assist your current reliance on your attribution software that’s telling you which ads to scale and providing attribution, but if I’m honest, attribution really doesn’t matter all that much from the perspective of picking a winning ad. They should all be winning now that everyone targets broad. Different strokes for different folks, but at the end of the day, all things being equal, they should perform similarly. You should just map to a journey aimed at the hook via a landing page.
Brand: But some don’t perform at all!
Me: There are a lot of really bad ads out there. It just might be possible that you have a few of them. At the end of the day, holding most variables equal, you should see increased performance across all ads if you focus on data collection and customer journey mapping towards people that drive the most revenue. Focus on your landing pages and product pages.
Brand: Wait, so you’re telling me if I just look at ROAS, I’m missing out by not factoring in things like the number of orders, which is CAC, and other things?
Me: I’m saying that attribution is a crutch. We accept low levels of conversion rate and low click-through rates because we’re told they are good in relation to industry standards. Do you want to be like everyone else or better? Brand: Better of course! Me: Well if you want to be better, then you have to put in work across the entire customer journey because the vast majority of brands aren’t. The only way to be better than others is to do things they aren’t.I’m going to keep saying this, collect data and build customer journeys for people that are the ones making you money. #customerjourney #acquistion #strategyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jivanco