Over the past several years, marketers around the world have been trying to crack the code in their marketing campaigns—rapid ad optimization and accurate attribution.
How can marketers, businesses, and agencies alike truly attribute success to their myriad of marketing efforts when access to accurate data seems to be deteriorating?
Well, National Positions may have found a solution!
As customer data (understandably) becomes more inaccessible, and tech giants like Apple and Facebook have added fuel to the fire, we knew we needed a solution. We wanted a way to ethically bridge between the investments businesses are putting into their marketing and the customers that have converted.
Here are just a few problems AdBeacon is addressing, by providing:
– Accurate attribution reporting
– Better “lookback windows,” with up to 90 days on Facebook
– The entire customer journey for campaign conversions
– Actual weighted value for the marketing funnel
– Attribution for social media, direct search, organic search, and paid media—at the same time
We wanted to know our clients’ best-selling products—check. We needed to know the highest-value geographies for orders—check. Best day, times, and channels for traffic, purchasing, and revenue—check, check, and check again!
We are unlocking far more than what we originally set out to find and we couldn’t be more excited! So, let’s dive into how AdBeacon is going to change our marketing campaigns for the better.
AdBeacon—Powerful Ad Optimization
AdBeacon has been simple to use—both for us and our clients. If you have ever logged in to your Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or Google Analytics, you have experienced the plethora of options and reporting customizations available.
And this gets overwhelming—fast.
But all that we (and our clients) really want to know is what is working and what is not—at a glance.
The portal we get to work in streamlines our clients’ most valuable campaign data into easy-to-understand graphical formats with automated predictive modeling so we can optimize campaigns faster—much faster.
Not only can we quickly access all conversion reporting, but we can also directly access our clients’ third-party ad platforms, like Facebook, so we can control campaigns from within AdBeacon.
Features are still being added, but right off the bat, we can see our clients’ attribution reporting, integrations, and conversions, as well as have the ability to optimize campaigns with just a couple of clicks.
Ecommerce Integrations
AdBeacon integrates not only with Google, Facebook, Bing, etc. but also with ecommerce platforms like Shopify.
By integrating actual purchase data, we can now see the entirety of our clients’ conversion funnels from the first touch to the last click. We are not talking about a general idea—we mean on a granular level right down to the specific customer.
By integrating a client’s ecommerce store data, AdBeacon removes layers of obfuscation and assumptions surrounding where and how customers are converting.
For example, marketers may see the majority of purchases coming from your website and assume that Google search is doing all the heavy lifting. When in reality, your customer may have seen you on Facebook, then did a Google search, then clicked your Google ad, then finally came back directly to your website to make a purchase.
Knowing (and seeing) these customer journeys not only helps attribute success but also lets us build better ad strategies moving forward.
The Power of First-Party Data
The most valuable data you should be focusing on for the foreseeable future is your first-party data. Your ecommerce CRM can collect a variety of customer data, especially if you have a site requiring a profile for purchasing.
What kind of information do customers provide when they are making a purchase?
Product selection, order size, device type, location, phone numbers, and beyond—all of which give you insight into your customers’ mindset and preferences.
For example, if out of 100 orders you could see that 80 were from men and 70 of those were made on Android devices, this information could completely change your paid media targeting and ad spend moving forward.
So, as Google continues to eliminate cookies, Apple leans harder on ad opt-outs, and Facebook deals with the iOS update(s) aftermath, focusing on your own first-party conversion data grows even more valuable. AdBeacon “bakes in” this first-party data collection (via your ecommerce platform API), so you never lose (and can always access) your data with a click.
Offline Conversion Tracking
Since we (and you) can now fast-track your first-party data collection, you can take this a step further. It’s time for us to make use of your data!
All of that traffic that converts into paying customers from your website, social media platforms, and paid media efforts is gold for improving your marketing performance. This data can be used to enrich your paid media campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
The concept is fairly simple: collect the conversion data coming to your brand from customers and reapply this data back into your paid media campaigns. Why? Better targeting, better ROI, and lower cost per acquisition (CPA).
Many have heard about offline conversion tracking, but very few have taken the steps to collect and utilize this valuable data. AdBeacon automates the collection of this data for users for simple offloading and utilization in future campaigns. AdBeacon retains none of this data for internal use (or third-party use). All the data is available to you for current or future campaigns.
Unlocking Real Customer Journeys
As alluded to earlier, unlocking the customer journey was one of our key goals.
In today’s world, customers rarely discover, research, and buy what they need in a single channel. We search on Google, discover on Facebook, click ads, etc.—and here is a dirty little secret you may not know: everyone wants to take credit for your customer!
Google and Facebook like to use what is called “last-click attribution,” meaning that no matter where else your customer may have gone online, if they made a purchase after clicking an ad (the last click), they want to take credit.
Needless to say, this can make really understanding the customer journey a major headache.
AdBeacon helps unlock these customer journeys for each individual customer. When a customer converts into a sale, AdBeacon can show us all the steps or “touches” your customer took leading up to the conversion. This alone is a breakthrough.
Sometimes a customer will truly click a Facebook ad and make the purchase in one go. Other times there might be 10 “touches” bouncing from Facebook, to search, to a Google ad, etc. Now we can see every step and how each attributes to your final customer conversion.
More Accurate Than Google and Facebook?!
As we said, when it comes to paid media, every ad platform wants to take credit so you will continue to invest in their ad platform. That said, there are other metrics that all marketers like to talk about (yes, even us). Metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS), lifetime value (LTV), and conversion revenue are just a few.
So, how do we know that AdBeacon gives us more accuracy than Google and Facebook? Because with the integration of your ecommerce store data, we can attribute conversions directly to the campaigns they came from.
This means you won’t have multiple ad platforms claiming success for the same conversion—AdBeacon automates this attribution accurately with your first-party data. AdBeacon even puts your “reported” data like ROAS and revenue side by side with your “actual” data, so you don’t need to guess or assume the data validity.
At the end of the day, AdBeacon pulls back the curtain on success metrics so we can optimize your campaigns faster than ever before.
New Account Betas Are Open!
We couldn’t be more excited about the value that AdBeacon is going to bring to our clients. After just a few months of beta testing, we are seeing higher ad ROI and revenues and lower cost per acquisition.
As we get ready to implement AdBeacon for all our clients, we are starting early access to all new paid social media advertising clients. Our team completes every aspect of setup so you will be able to access your real-time data right out of the box.
With more updates coming, AdBeacon is bringing additional features, customizations, and ad optimization capabilities that will change the game for marketers and businesses alike.
If you want to see how we are putting AdBeacon to work or how you can integrate this powerful platform into your next campaign, give us a call or visit our contact us page to get started!