Let us paint a picture for you.
You’ve launched a new advertising campaign, let it run for 48 hours and now you’re panicking; “why hasn’t it converted?”, “Why is my ROAS so low”…
Does this sound familiar?
The truth many clients don’t actually want to hear is that not every advert is meant to generate sales or leads. While the underlying objective of the entire campaign is to convert and generate sales, some ads are specifically designed for a range of outcomes depending on where the customer is in their journey.
Which results in fixating on the wrong metrics, such as looking at ROAS on an awareness campaign, and neglecting at looking at the bigger picture of what’s happening across the customer journey.
At Omni, we often help our clients reframe the way they evaluate performance by tying campaign objectives to the right KPIs.
The specific metrics you use to evaluate your ad campaign should depend on the intent of the campaign, which shouldn’t always be to drive sales, since that neglects to account for the customer journey (as you’ll soon learn).
In this blog, we go into:
- Why the customer journey matters
- Why customer journey-based measurements matter
- The KPIs that matter at each stage of the funnel
- How to interpret and act on ad data
So let’s dive into it.
A Case Study For The Skeptics
If you’re skeptical, completely understand; so let us show you proof.
Last year, we partnered with a client who was pouring budget into a broken funnel. Their ads were entirely conversion-focused, targeting customers who had never even heard of their brand yet. In other words, they were trying to sell to people who didn’t yet know, trust, or prefer them, which ultimately paved the way for wasted spend and poor results.
Here’s what we did instead: we reduced their ad spend by 14% and reallocated that budget across the full customer journey, specifically the stages which were being neglected and standing in the way of ultimately converting: our focus shifted to building awareness, trust, and preference first.
We developed engaging video content that told the brand’s story; who they are, their purpose, and their mission, alongside educational content that highlighted product ingredients and benefits. This approach established credibility and nurtured consumer confidence, positioning the brand above its extensive list of competitors.
The result? Within a year, that strategic reallocation of spend led to a 20% increase in ROAS and a 32% increase in MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio provides a bigger picture view of how efficiently your marketing spend is driving revenue), all while spending 14% less on ads.
So, What Actually Is The Customer Journey?
The custom journey represents the entire experience someone has with your brand; from the initial moment of hearing about you, right through to becoming a loyal, repeat customer.
This journey isn’t a linear path; generally people will loop, pause, disappear for a while, and come back later. However, we can still break down the customer journey into 5 categories:
- Awareness: They discover you for the first time
- Consideration or Education: They’re learning, comparing and weighing up their purchase options.
- Preference: Following the process of comparing you to competitors, they decide on which brand/s they prefer in the market
- Conversion: They’re ready to act; be it through buying your products or signing up to your services
- Retention or Repeat: They become loyal to your brand, and come back again, ideally telling their friends about you.
It’s important to understand these stages of the customer journey, because your advertising should be designed to meet people where they’re at to encourage them to move through the funnel.
Why The Customer Journey Is Key To Measuring Success
Imagine you’re throwing a dinner party. Would you judge the success of it on whether the guests ate all of the dessert, or would you also judge it based on the great conversations, the laughter, the wine spills, the food, etc.
Advertising shouldn’t be any different; you want to look at your performance holistically through the lens of the customer journey, and the specific outcomes associated with those stages.
Each of those stages require different messaging, different tactics, and different success metrics.
Measuring Success Across The Customer Journey
We hope it’s now clear that when it comes to advertising, not every stage of the journey is about making that sale.
We measure success based on where the customer is in the funnel, and what the campaign is designed to achieve.
Which is why looking only at sales or ROAS can be misleading. A healthy funnel has multiple layers, each of which requires its own success markers.
Each point of the journey has it’s unique purpose:
- Awareness: Build familiarity and reach new audiences
- Education: Nurture interest and education on your value
- Preference: Tip the scales in your favour to make customers prefer you over your competitors
- Conversion: Drive immediate actions like sales or sign-ups
- Retention or Repeat: Encourage repeat purchases and brand advocacy
Top of Funnel: Awareness
At this stage, people are only beginning to discover your brand, so the goal isn’t necessarily to drive an immediate purchase. Rather, we’d aim to spark interest and recognition.
- Primary Goal: Visibility and engagement
- KPIs: Impressions, reach, video views, engagement rate, CTR
Middle of Funnel: Education and Preference
Here, your audience is at the stage of being curious. They’re researching, comparing and learning more about what you offer. Therefore, your ads should be curated around education, nurturing and building trust.
- Primary Goal: Build familiarity and capture intent
- KPIs: Time on site, add-to-cart rate, email sign-ups, content interactions
Bottom of Funnel: Conversation
At this stage, we aim to turn intent into action. If we’ve taken our audience through the funnel, they should be ready to commit, so your campaigns should make it as seamless as possible to achieve this.
- Primary Goal: Drive purchases or leads
- KPIs: ROAS, cost per acquisition (CPA), conversion rate, revenue
Post-Purchase: Retention and Repeat
The funnel doesn’t stop at the sale, we want customers to keep coming back to you, and ideally spread the word. That’s where retention-focused campaigns come in.
- Primary Goal: Build loyalty and long-term value
- KPIs: Repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value (CLV), cost per retained customer
What The Data Actually Means
An extension of our current discussion is the importance of knowing what the numbers on your dashboards actually mean for your customer journey.
A question we always encourage our clients to keep in mind when looking at data is: what does this actually tell me about where my customers are in their journey?
Here’s how we approach it at Omni:
- Attribution modeling with context: Rather than crediting the final click, we map out which touchpoints moved customers forward in the funnel. Doing so will show us how each stage contributes to the bigger picture.
- Cross-channel storytelling: Your customers don’t live in one single channel, therefore your reporting shouldn’t either. It’s important to consider how Google, Meta, email and organic all worked together. While Google search may have captured your final conversion, Meta ads may have planted those seeds weeks earlier, while email and social media kept you top of mind.
- Intentional interaction: The goal here is uncovering what actually drives and shifts consumer behaviour. Whether it’s A/B testing, adjusting copy or trialling different audiences, it’s important to align testing to specific journey stages that make sense strategically.
All of this to say, don’t just look at the numbers and make surface-level conclusions or decisions.
We recommend you seek to utilise them as indications of where your customer is, how they’re moving through the journey, and what’s pushing them closer to conversion and loyalty.
Final Thoughts: Look At The Bigger Picture
All in all, advertising success isn’t just generating sales. It involves building campaigns with the customer journey in front of mind, and understanding how to evaluate the success of them based on the specific stages your campaign is targeting.
Remember, each stage should have a different objective, and each stage should ultimately work to move customers towards the next stage.
Need help running successful campaigns at every stage of the customer journey?
At Omni Online, we partner with eCommerce, B2B and Wholesale brands to build out successful campaigns, track and optimise every stage of the funnel.
Book a digital alignment call with our team to chat about how we can help you do the same.
