Not all YouTube ads are created equal. Most companies track the success or failure of their online ad campaigns based on the “last click” model. This inadvertently attributes all of the credit of a sale to the last clicked ad or keyword searched by the consumer.
However, when it comes to converting an online browser into an active shopper, a consumer may see several different ads from your company well before they decide to purchase. And, each of these ads would have played a part in getting them to make that final sales click.
With only a ‘last click’ metric to measure the success of your online advertising, this makes it difficult to fully understand the effectiveness of your entire online marketing campaigns. Instead, by leveraging attribution models in your Google Ads, you’re able to choose how much credit each ad type gets for your sales conversions. This way you will have a better understanding of which ads perform best in helping to close the sale and how you can optimize your ads across the entire customer journey.
Attribution models, therefore, help with:
- Crafting more compelling messaging earlier on in the customer purchasing cycle by finding those opportunities to influence customers to buy when they first see your ads (as opposed to seeing your ads for the second or third time).
- Determining what types of ads work best for your business. Not all attribution models work for all companies, but by leveraging attribution models with Google Ads, you’re able to pinpoint which model works for your company and how you can optimize your campaigns accordingly.
- Improving your ad bidding because you’ll know which ads perform best for your audience and be able to invest more money into those outlets as opposed to others that may not effectively drive people to a sale.
To truly maximize your results with attribution models, it’s important to consider all of the actions and ad types your customers may see along their journey to purchasing from you. Taking the time now to review your marketing campaign success to determine which type of attribution model to use is key in knowing which steps along the customer purchasing process are critical to turning browsers into shoppers.
For example, you might attribute credit for the sale to the first ad clicked versus the last ad clicked. Likewise, you may find that the most recent ads clicked within 12 hours leading up to a sale should be more heavily weighted than ads clicked outside of this window. Keep in mind that honing in on the best attribution model for your business will require you to understand the entire customer journey and consider what factors may influence if and when a customer buys.
The more data you can analyze to better understand your customer’s purchasing behavior the more equipped you will be in knowing where to invest your marketing dollars to get maximum results.
