Potential buyers have increasingly turned to the web as the first step in their purchase decisions. So for years, digital marketers in insurance, auto sales, and other high consideration industries have been using AdWords to build awareness and generate leads. These leads have been handed to sales reps, who then help customers complete the purchase process.
In AdWords, you’ve been able to see which keywords lead to higher or lower lead volumes, and to optimize for a cost per lead goal. But there's been no easy way to measure and optimize in AdWords for events that happen beyond the website, like a customer order taken over the phone by your sales team.
New Conversion Import Feature
The new AdWords conversion import feature can help you measure and optimize for the complete end-to-end purchase process. Now you can upload your offline conversion events into AdWords and see how clicks on your ads led to sales made in the offline world such as over the phone or via a sales rep.
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And since your offline conversion events will be incorporated into your existing AdWords conversion data, tools such as
Search Funnels,
Automated rules and
Flexible bid strategies can leverage that data.
How you might use the conversion import feature
Let’s see how importing conversions can help a small business measure and optimize for the entire customer journey, from online leads to offline sales.
Isabelle designs, builds and sells high-end custom furniture. She uses AdWords to drive prospective customers to her website, where they can submit their contact information and request a sales call. AdWords Conversion Tracking can measure these raw lead submissions, but since most of them won’t result in a sale, she optimizes her campaigns on raw submitted leads; not actual sales.
Now that she’s able to import her offline conversion data (including sale value), Isabelle can better understand which keywords drive the most profitable sales. With a more accurate ROI picture, Isabelle can better manage her bids and budget.
How to get started
For step by step directions to get started, check out this article on
how to import your offline conversions.
Several software solution providers, including
Marketo,
Mongoose Metrics and
SugarCRM have also posted guides on integrating with this new feature. In addition, we have published a guide for integrating with
Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud.
More to come
As we mentioned last week, with the launch of
cross-account conversion tracking and Search Funnels, we’re working on tools like the conversion import feature to help you measure your customer’s complex path to purchase.
Our product roadmap has lots of improvements and new features aimed at providing a more complete picture of your customers' journey and more accurate measure of ads effectiveness across devices and across channels. Stay tuned!
Posted by Jon Diorio, Product Management Lead, AdWords Reporting & Insights
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