One of the most important parts of any Singapore PPC campaign is your metrics. This is what will help you to measure your efforts and create concrete goals. However, not all metrics are the same. Sure, getting more clicks may give you confidence in your strategy, but this is ultimately considered to be a vanity metric and it won’t help you to generate revenue. Metrics that drive engagement are the most crucial as they can help you to optimise your campaign. Let’s discuss three of the most underrated, yet powerful, metrics.
1. Revenue per session
If you spend money to make money, then you’re probably tracking your PPC campaign performance with metrics like spend, clicks, profitability, conversions, and CTR. You likely adjust your bids, create negative keywords, and divide all of your campaigns between various mediums such as display and search. If this isn’t your strategy, then you should definitely consider re-evaluating your techniques because you’re losing a significant amount of money.
This isn’t to say that these basic metrics are all there is to it. You should also use revenue per session, or RPS. This metric can help drive your decisions. You see, it’s a good idea to calculate your bid price as the lowest value but you can only calculate your profitability and profit margin if you have access to RPS. Clicks and conversions are more of an estimate as opposed to an exact number.
Using RPS means that you will be able to compare spending against revenue. Not only that, but you can account for several revenue-generating events. For instance, a conversion may count someone who purchases a single item, but with RPS you can account for several purchases or a purchase and upsells. This gives you the ability to segment your most valuable customer acquisitions and maximise your profitability. You’ll also be able to tie negative revenue events, such as returns and refunds, to your search engine marketing campaign.
Calculate RPS by using the decimal system. This means that you shouldn’t count your conversions as a no or yes. Instead, you should count your events based on their cash value. You may then use cross-channel analytics in order to tie all your conversion events to the session.
2. Bounce rate
Another important metric is the rate at which visitors arrive to your landing page and then immediately leave before they can ever take any action. There are several things that can cause this, depending on your conversion point’s structure. The user may bounce before they click through to your second page; fail to fill out your form; or stop in the middle of completing their order.
It’s especially important to know where your visitors exit if your website has a multi-step process such as requiring that they click through to a second page before they can fill out your form. If the process is single-step, you can always track your bounces against UTMs in Google Analytics. This way, you will be able to immediately see where your bounces are coming from.
Even if you happen to be running affiliate programs on CPA rates and you’re only paying for conversions, your bounces should still be tracked. A poor process may not always be the culprit in this case, but there is still a chance that your process could be making your more money and preventing your from gaining real traction.
There are several reasons why your website visitors may not convert. For instance, your page could be poorly designed, such as your UX of your landing page may not be clear or persuasive enough. Your page could present options that conflict with each other, meaning they may be overwhelmed by options and decide not to take any action at all. Your page may feature a complicated conversion process, meaning your forms may require too many steps.
There are instances in which your ad copy may be misleading and direct your visitors to inappropriate landing pages. Your CTA may be unappealing and include generic words like “Submit” or “Apply.” You may also be dealing with campaign targeting errors in which you drive users who have no interest to your page.
This is why it’s a good idea to do a lot of split testing. You should also work to understand your visitors’ behaviour. What compels them to take action? Is it your value proposition or the UX of your landing? Strip away all distractions and make sure that your CTA is easy to identify and understand. Just remember that bouncing users doesn’t always result in a loss. In some cases, these users may be worth retargeting, especially if they followed several steps of your conversion or purchase process.
3. Conversion rate by audience segment
The more information that you have about your visitors, and those who convert, the more efficiently you will be able to target your campaigns. For example, you should ideally know their location, including their nation, region, city, IP level, and DMA. You should know what type of device the are using. You should be aware of their demographics, including their age, occupation, gender, education level, marital status, and income. You need to target various audiences as well as exclude those who are not eligible for your offer. For instance, if your Singapore company only ships nationally, then you shouldn’t bother with advertising abroad.
Make sure that you challenge your own assumptions. For example, if you sell health supplements, consider that they may appeal to both bodybuilders and retirees. This type of information can be best learned by testing your targeting options.
So create specific campaigns as well as ad groups for various audience segments. It can be extremely tempting to compare stats between these audiences, but you should ideally treat them as being distinctly different. Craft campaigns, landing pages, and even pricing structures that are unique to each market.
Get your user information from either end of your process. It will be much easier to know who is doing what if you select an audience at the campaign level and then target specific landing pages. Once the user has entered the page you can get browser information. And as you generate more information about each visitor, you will be able to tighten your targeting and increase your conversions rates and CTR’s. You will also be able to reduce the costs of your campaign. The best part about this is that you will gain insights across several different markets about the how much competition can be found in each.
Conclusion
When it comes to running a Singapore SEM campaign, most Singapore marketers tend to focus on the most basic metrics such as spend, clicks, profitability, conversions, and CTR. However, many overlook the three most important: revenue per session, bounce rate, and conversion rate by audience segment. If you are able to get a tight grip on all three of these values then you will have a detailed understanding of how your campaigns work and why. You will also know exactly what you need to do to enhance their performance.
If you buy at scale then you should consider building in automation in order to cut your downtime. This will help to ensure rapid responsiveness as well as simplify any process where there are complex calculations.
