Michael Epps Utley {kind=image/jpg}
With the advent of digital marketing came the evolution of precise measurement tools, providing marketing professionals with a significant advantage in calculating real-time campaign performance over the old-school “80% math and 20% gut-feeling” method.
Traditional, pre-digital methods for evaluating markets and media buys were calculated based on BBM, NADbank, and PMB research, while results reports leaned into anecdotal evidence of a campaign’s performance associated with an increase (or lack of) brand awareness or sales.
Unless you were retained by a large packaged goods company investing heavily in diagnostics designed to evaluate the potential (notice we’re saying ‘potential’) effectiveness of their campaigns and comparing returns, performance measurement was never an exact science.
A (Very) Brief History of Digital Marketing & Analytics Tools
The first clickable banner ad was launched by AT&T in 1994. It appeared at HotWired. In 1996, the first tracking tools were developed. In 1998, the first major paid search model arrived, which later turned into PPC advertising, and by 2000, Google AdWords launched.
These foundations eventually evolved into today’s sophisticated tools. Now, we can calculate true ROI to guide ad spend and its effectiveness, as well as key metrics such as Conversion Rates (CR), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and Cost Per Lead (CPL), along with engagement metrics, long-term strategy metrics, and more.
The caveat with all this available math is in developing the right KPIs and drilling down on the right measurements. In other words, to borrow a phrase from Mary Iqbal, “Measure wisely, or not at all.”
Early in my career, a manager simplified the concept of optimizing ad placements in a way that stuck. He said, “Feed the Eagles. Starve the Turkeys.”
It was a kind of shorthand for conversion rate optimization and performance marketing, which holds that not all leads are created equal and that not every market converts the same way. Basically, when something consistently underperforms, stop feeding it your dollars and instead redirect spending to markets that are proving they’re producing results.
Why Performance Marketing Works
Every performance marketing strategy is built around measurable outcomes. Instead of paying for exposure and hoping customers respond, campaigns monitor CPC, clicks, lead rates, leads, close rates, sales, revenue, and ROAS (among other indicators). Results can be evaluated quickly. You can see what works. And you can see what doesn’t.
When a campaign is performing well, it can be scaled. When it isn’t, adjustments can happen immediately.
How to Improve Sales Conversion Rates: A Case Study
At GoEpps, we’d developed a digital marketing plan for a particular client, part of which ran targeted campaigns in multiple markets. Each market received the same marketing investment and produced the same number of leads.
At first glance, the campaign looked balanced. Lead volume was healthy and consistent across all locations. But as we drilled down on individual market performance, differences emerged. We’ll simplify the numbers here to illustrate what we saw and how we reacted.
In the first market, the close rate was 4%. In the second, it was 8%. In the third market, it was 12%. Assuming roughly 120 leads per market, those close rates translated to about 5 customers in the first market, 10 in the second, and approximately 14 in the third.
It’s easy to view a 4-12% close rate as perfectly acceptable across a blend of markets. But if each sale represented roughly $10,000 in revenue, the impact becomes clearer. The first market produced about $50,000 in revenue. The second generated approximately $100,000. And the third produced roughly $140,000. The same lead volume and marketing investment produced very different outcomes.
When the numbers were evaluated more closely, the opportunity became obvious. By reallocating campaign spend and traffic toward the markets converting most efficiently, overall campaign revenue could increase by roughly 50% without increasing the total budget.
This is where our “Feed the Eagles” principle helps with performance marketing optimization.
Instead of continuing to divide the budget evenly across all markets throughout a campaign, strategic performance marketing enabled us to identify which markets are converting leads into customers most efficiently and redirect resources toward those opportunities.
In this example, sending more leads to the highest-performing market increased total campaign revenue. We could also evaluate additional funding for follow-ups to lift lagging markets. This meant directing additional resources to different follow-up sequences or increasing campaigns to boost conversion rates. Rather than consistently directing resources toward the strongest markets, we evaluate the entire system to ensure optimal overall expenditure for optimal overall performance and ROI.
Where Traditional and Performance Marketing Overlap
Every marketing campaign begins with a goal. Working with the client, we ask, “What do we want to achieve?”
The client might want a certain percentage increase in consultation requests, lead form submissions, or purchases. Once the objective is defined, the appropriate tracking systems are implemented to measure the KPIs that matter throughout the buyer journey.
Analytics platforms and conversion tracking allow us to see exactly how campaigns perform across markets and audiences. That visibility makes it possible to refine campaigns continuously instead of waiting until the end of a campaign cycle to evaluate results.
The Benefit of Performance Marketing in Complex Situations
At GoEpps, this kind of analysis happens every day. Campaign performance is regularly reviewed by dedicated teams to determine which ads drive engagement, which audiences generate qualified leads, and which markets convert those leads into customers.
When we segment the markets and the numbers reveal where the best results are coming from, the next step is clear: Feed those Eagles, starve the Turkeys.
