Before You Discard a Failing CPV Campaign, Read This

We’ve all had a campaign that promised high conversion rates completely tank on us. Sometimes the trend just died and we entered at the wrong time, but often the failure can be attributed to some mistake made in targeting or ad development. If you can recognize what caused that low conversion rate, you can turn your trash into treasure.

Some Key Performance Indicators

Study the key performance indicators to get a sense of what went wrong. You need to understand:

• Who your audience is
• How your audience reacted
• What your audience did after that initial reaction
• Where your audience went, and if they bailed…
• When did your audience bail on you

Research will tell you who your audience is. It’s likely that you’ve applied some targeting to your campaigns, so check your traffic stats. Are you getting decent traffic? If not, your targeting might be too restrictive and you need to re-examine your research.

Bounce rate will tell you how your audience reacted to the ad. It might signal the ad isn’t loading very quickly, or tell you an ad isn’t very effective at driving action. Bounce rate can also signal which pages cause a positive reaction (look for the ones with a low bounce rate).

Sites visited will tell you what your audience did and where they went. Sites visited is also good for most popular landing pages, so be sure that you know your own URL structure and can readily tell the difference between a landing page and a form page.

Time spent is the final key indicator, as that informs you of how long your audience was on board with your messaging. Low time spent means there is something wrong with your ad’s call to action, and you should re-evaluate your copy.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is a passionate marketing professional based out of Los Angeles. Ted Dhanik is the CEO of engage:BDR, and an expert on digital media and advertising. Ted Dhanik also blogs frequently for VentureBeat and AdAge.