How do you plan your B2B online marketing? Although we all speak “conversion” in the B2B world, I see many online campaigns these days are still designed to drive traffic. Many marketers are looking at the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) as the key metric.
I have been sharing my view in this blog about CTR. It is very dependent and extremely arbitrary when we use it to conclude a campaign result. CTR can’t even be applied or generalized in vertical market where buyer profiles are vary across different product and service areas.
The study “Natural Born Clickers” conducted by Tacoda, Starcom, and Comscore has shed light on an interesting discussion around click. Although it is more on the B2C side, I think the conclusion can also be the denominator for B2B.
1). Assumption of click based optimization is that everyone that sees your ad is equally likely to click it, but data shows this assumption to be false.
2). When you optimize to click-based conversions you are shifting your plan to reach a specific type of internet user.
3). Even when click-based conversion is your metric of interest, you are still limiting the reach of your campaign by optimizing based on the behavior of a small group.
4). More time = higher likelihood to click.
Particularly we should look at the point (2) and (3). As a B2B marketer, you should get used to profile the demographic before executing the campaign. The quality that you have done to profile your target audience determines the conversion. Whether or not your campaign has achieved a high CTR doesn’t tell you a lot of the whole picture.
Imagine this, you can have an extremely high CTR just because of a mis-leading call-to-action in the ad. You simply target the wrong audiences. But if you have a good and accurate audience profile and a high CTR, then you should be able to convert a lot of the clickers. It doesn’t make sense if it is not.
So in your next online campaign, look at the post-click metric such as conversion or bounce rate, collect some clues for what happens after the clicks, see who are attracted to your campaign. As a B2B marketer, you should be more interested in the buyers, than the clickers.
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