Hi! We connected Marketo and Google Adwords through launchpoint services. A few questions below regarding best practices...
Question 1: When setting up "New Conversions" for Adwords, what conversion points (and how many) do you recommend and which stages do you map them to?
Example:
Marketo Revenue Stages mapped >> to Adwords conversions
MCL >> Net new lead
MEL >> Known lead
MQL >> Marketing qualified
SAL >> Sales accepted
SQL >> Sales qualified
Customer >> New customer
Customer Nurture >> Existing customer
Question 2: Is it best practice to map to stages after someone becomes a customer? (MQC, SAC, SQC, WON UPSELL)
Question 3: How would existing and net new customer contacts be tracked in Adwords conversions?
Example: Someone clicks through our paid ads as a net new lead. Our inside sales associate review new lead because it was flagged as someone on our Named Account list. We're actually already working with this Named Account, so the new lead is then converted and added to an Account that is already a customer; thereby moving them to "Customer" in our Revenue Model. How would this reflect in Adwords?
Question 4: How does the automated "optimization setting" in Adwords work? Specifically, how does it work once we've defined our conversions in Adwords?
Hi Morgan,
The answers to question 1 and question 2 are completely dependent upon what you want to be able to report on. Typically, I advise clients to map conversions to all of the stages on the Success Path (the light green background) up to Customer. The reason for this is that we have to keep in mind our goals related to running an AdWords campaign. Typically, AdWords campaigns are run to acquire new leads, which turn into first-time customers. If that's my goal, then that's what I want to report on. This means that my conversions will run through the Customer stage and focus on the Success Path. That being said, if you also want to know which campaigns lead to the most leads/contacts that become disqualified--or those you should deprecate--you could also create conversions for your disqualified stages, provided you have those.
Question 3: How would existing and net new customer contacts be tracked in Adwords conversions?
Example: Someone clicks through our paid ads as a net new lead. Our inside sales associate review new lead because it was flagged as someone on our Named Account list. We're actually already working with this Named Account, so the new lead is then converted and added to an Account that is already a customer; thereby moving them to "Customer" in our Revenue Model. How would this reflect in Adwords?
Answer 3: If you have an AdWords conversion set up for "Customer", then AdWords would reflect that this lead was converted to a Customer. Depending on your organization and your business process, this may be accurate for you, or it may not be. I would want to review this within the context of your business process and reporting requirements to determine if you should refresh the triggers/rules that move someone into the "Customer" stage.
Question 4: How does the automated "optimization setting" in Adwords work? Specifically, how does it work once we've defined our conversions in Adwords?
Answer 4: I don't have any experience with the optimization setting in AdWords, so can't really provide any guidance on this one.
If you have any follow-up questions or would like to discuss more, you can reach out to me at drew@leadmd.com.
Thanks!
Drew