Set conversion measurement up before launch, read spend and conversions against your own margins, and give the channel long enough to be judged fairly.
Decide what success means first
Before launch, write down what a good outcome looks like: a cost per acquisition you could live with, a return on spend that works against your margins, or simply a number of first purchases from new customers.
Channels get cancelled far more often for having no agreed definition of success than for failing against one.
What is available to measure
Available metrics are set by the advertising platform and can change. Spend and delivery information are the foundation; conversion information depends on measurement being set up properly on your side.
We report what genuinely exists. Where a number is not available, we say so rather than filling the gap with an estimate that looks authoritative.
- Spend and pacing against budget
- Delivery metrics made available by the platform
- Conversions recorded through your own measurement
- Your own analytics and order data as a cross-check
Reading early data carefully
Early data in any new channel is noisy. Small numbers swing wildly, and a single unusually large order can make a week look transformative.
Look at trends across a longer window, and resist restructuring campaigns every few days. Constant changes destroy the very consistency you need to learn anything.
Comparing against other channels
Comparing a new channel with a mature one on equal terms is unfair to the new one and unhelpful to you. Established channels have years of optimisation behind them.
A more useful question is whether the incremental spend is producing incremental orders at a cost you can accept.
What we report monthly
Every month you receive a written report covering spend, the delivery metrics available, conversion information where it exists, what we changed and what we recommend next. It is written to be read by a marketing manager, not decoded by an analyst.
Questions
- Will we get a live dashboard?
- You have access to your own ad account, and we provide a written monthly report. We do not build a dashboard that implies more precision than the channel's available metrics support.
- What if performance is poor?
- We say so, explain what we think is causing it, and recommend a change. If we think the channel is not right for you yet, we will tell you that too.