The Click is Dead Again
The click is dying. We know you have heard that before and are still on the hook to report on clicks, click-through rates, cost per click, etc. But this time, it’s for real.
These days, performance isn’t a click. It’s about creating positive business outcomes like conversions, qualified leads, downloads, sales and other key performance indicators.
Deeper level metrics
Some brands struggle to get to a deeper level on their own, but that doesn’t mean they have to live in a 1990s analytics package. For those not yet sophisticated enough to set up pixels, landing pages, conversion paths, etc., GA-4 is already bringing you engagement, bounce rates, time on page and other metrics. When viewed with a focused lens, these metrics should be considered key audience tests that savvy digital marketers wield to engage the engageable and optimize away from audiences that don’t care.
For instance, let’s say your direct traffic is spending two minutes per session and bouncing at a 30 percent clip with over 60 percent for GA-4 engagement score. Your aim should be to see similar metrics from search, both organic and paid, because you want your prospects to have as good an experience as loyal fans. That provides three sources to benchmark audiences on-site.
All of that sets up the critical conversation with other source vendors: what do you do when you’re being sent a bad audience?
Start by defining a bad audience; the numbers tell the story. A bounce rate of over 90 percent. Time on page less than 10 seconds. Engagement below 50 percent. Any of those might be explainable, but if combined from a single source, that source isn’t bringing the right audience to me.
Don’t instantly sever ties over these metrics. Instead, start optimizing quickly. Is it the targeting? Is it the timing? Is it the messaging? Each of these offers opportunities for conversation and each can be optimized and tested. The burden, however, is on the source because there are inherent benchmarks from other sources, vendors, tactics, etc. If your best customers and random prospects find value on your site, why don’t the people vendors are sending to you?
On-site engagement metrics are the iterative step to get us to where we can kill the click. They aren’t the business-centric KPIs we strive for in the future, but they will take us to a better place.
If you need help with metrics or audience optimization, let’s have a conversation.