For a certain time now, accountability is one of the most important trends within the marketing field. Transparency, in terms of ROI, is probably a top factor in the increased attention of online within the external communication.
By making the ROI important, we have made the measurable event, the conversion, the primary driver for many decisions and optimization tactics.

Why Your Bonus Structure Might Be Wrong

A manager will probably receive the credits for the excellent results his unit has reached. The question is: does he really deserve them? Or was it the previous manager who set the basis of the success? Or were there certain members of his team who stood up to set the way which lead to success?
Same for the marketer who conquered the heart of the customers with his brand. He received the credits, but the excellent operations, friendly and proactive support might be even more important.

(Please note how recent developments lead to heavenly discussion on this model.)

Smart managers and marketers do understand that there were probably more events involved before the conversion happened.
A conversion is just the event which receives the credits for a goal. So they focus on the process which leads to conversions.

Keywords Are Just People

In online marketing, often a keyword gets the credit for a specific conversion. Wouldn’t it be great if we could put more weight on keywords earlier in the path to conversion?
http://www.vimeo.com/4892024This is the also reason why you still need to make people who understand customers and the stage of their purchase life cycle responsible for the campaign management. Not somebody who is just into statistics or computers, but somebody who’s into the people: a marketeer who understand the complete buying process of a customer.

Balance Your Credit Distribution

Your branded keywords are probably your ‘best converting’ keywords. But what about the keyword who were used by customers who are early in their consideration life cycle?

In fact there are great metrics in your web analytics tool which you could use as correlations, trends or micro-conversions to value your upper funnel keywords:

Which marketeer does not know the AIDA model? This keyword funnel is no different than the well-known Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action stages. (Tip for PPC campaign managers: create separate campaigns for each type of success metric and optimize on different criteria per campaign).

The only difference shown above is a fair way to measure the success of keywords. But feel free to apply it elsewhere in your organization.

It is different, less save. Do you dare to change?