PERFORMANCE MARKETING @ Top of funnel

Performance marketing is often time seems as the bottom of the funnel activity. While a lot of the investments in performance marketing would make it seem like ‘bottom of funnel activity’ the reality is a little different. To clarify, its goals are realise at the bottom of the funnel (leads, conversions, sales) but its activation is across the entire customer journey.
 
The objective for performance marketing is conversion – leads, sign-ups, sales. Intermediate metrics like ‘clicks’ and ‘impressions’ are only milestones in building a more robust metric like CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and should not be treated as an end to themselves.
 
Lets talk about 3 key metrics for Performance Marketing (for a full range on this topic please read Avinash Kaushiks blog on this topic – link given below) :

1. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
2. Micro Conversions
3. Macro Conversions

 
How can we improve these performance marketing metrics and how is it linked to top-medium funnel consumer engagement ?

1. CPA : Cost per acquisistion is commonly understood as the Cost of the Campaign divided by the Conversions (where conversions is a desirable action/ goal that either leads to sale or is a sale). Reducing CPA has two components:
   1. Eliminate Wasteage : Look at post click through drop offs from the POV of underperformance in Search key words / landing page optimisation / mobile compatibility/ content fit as reasons why the drop-offs could occur.
   2. Improve Frictionless Flow : Audit user flows and think about reduction in steps/ simplicity in step completion to aid conversion.
2. Micro Conversion : Actions taken by consumers that strongly signal future intent are micros-conversions. Subscriptions to your newsletters, viewing your content, booking an appointment for a test-drive, form filling, making an enquiry are all medium to strong intent signals by consumers to buy your product. Isolate these valuable opportunities and see if you are making it simple and utilitarian for consumers to perform these behaviors. A better understanding of the user journey/ personas/ goals will lead to building a better user experience that usually eliminates much of the issues faced in microconversions.
3. Macro Conversion : Is the ultimate outcome desired – subscriptions, sales etc.. The last mile to conversion has usually the issues of complexity and transparency (pricing/ hidden costs/ delivery). Providing for complete transparency of pricing in terms of key cost factors (hidden costs/ delivery/ returns etc) earlier on in the process while eliminating the complexity of order completion in the last mile should help improve macro conversions.

 
The value of performance marketing when done right is strategic and goes beyond short-term results to optimising the entire user journey for widening the funnel at the top-middle while enabling an ease of conversion at the bottom.

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