The Hunger Games Guide to Paid Search, KPIs, and Conversion Tracking

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The Hunger Games Guide to Paid Search, KPIs, and Conversion Tracking

There are many ways that today’s business world is similar to “The Hunger Games.” Businesses constantly fight for market dominance and survival.

Any marketing strategy must involve numbers. Numbers offer the insights we need to evaluate the success or failure of our decisions and strategy.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure the success of our efforts and strategies. They enable monitoring and maximizing campaign performance to increase the ROI.

Although KPIs apply to any industry, selecting KPIs that align with your key business objectives is essential.

For instance, KPIs like click-through rate and impressions are more effective in a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. On the other hand, conversion-related KPIs are more suitable for Google Ads campaigns.

The current business scene is similar to “The Hunger Games.” Katniss reveals strategic insights we can leverage in real-world scenarios as she conquers the fight-to-death survival game.

Some Key Lessons from Hunger Games 

Focus

Katniss uses her time to track, trap and hunt animals and forage. Instead of relying on the issued food, Katniss focused on individual ventures that sharpened her skills.

The market is increasingly competitive, so it’s essential to remain focused on your goals and ensure your strategies align with your vision.

In a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you can leverage KPIs such as impressions to see many times your ads display.

Like Katniss focused on finishing her outstanding skills, the results will help you determine the areas to improve for better performance. 

The Cost per Lead Metric is also essential, as it evaluates the cost incurred for each click on an ad. The CPL formula is simple: Ad costs / Number of acquired leads.

Flexible

The Hunger Games is notorious for many challenging twists and turns. However, Katniss was flexible enough to adapt to the changes, which empowered her to survive.

Your brand’s challenges in the dynamic macro or micro-environment will likely evolve. Therefore, your strategies should be flexible to accommodate changing market conditions.

PPC advertising gives you control over the cost of advertising. However, it would be best to leverage this flexibility as the market changes depending on your brand’s needs.

It’s best to use Google Ads for PPC marketing because Google has the highest traffic. Therefore, it ensures your ads get the most clicks and impressions than other search engines.

Google Ads helps you adapt to the changing market environment, allowing more flexibility.

You can monitor various aspects of your PPC campaign, like impressions. Impressions show you the number of views on your ads, so you’ll know whether users clicked on them.

Team Up

From the movie’s early stages, Katniss understood that she needed relationships to survive. There could only be one winner, yet Katniss teamed up because it was the best way to ensure success.

Teams are more productive because they rely on each other’s strengths when working together. You only measure productivity if you have goals to compare the current performance.

Once you set your team’s goals for the PPC campaign, you can visually monitor progress using the innovative OKR Tool.

Customer 

Katniss survives the challenges in the arena by nurturing relationships with the residents in the Capital. Once she discovered she couldn’t survive alone, she started working on relationships that paid off in the long run.

 In any business, the critical relationship is between the customers and the brand. This is because customers grow and build the brand, not the company.

As you nurture customer relationships, the conversion rate is one of the best ways to gauge customers’ thoughts about your brand.

Conversion measures how your PPC ads perform in monetary terms. It helps you determine how much business your ads are bringing in. You’ll know whether every user clicks on your ad spends money and how much. 

Platforms such as Hubspot make calculating and monitoring your conversion rates easy.

Beyond your PPC campaign, you can leverage OKR goal setting in your business to focus on customer relationships.

Branding

Every brand should focus on developing a solid identity. Katniss’s costume designer turned the attributes of the poor mining district into something unique and memorable.

The Mockingjay symbol meant something and invoked a promise of freedom and hope.

Like the mocking jay, ensure you leverage your business’s unique attributes to build a strong brand that people notice and remember.

PPC ads are dynamic to combine videos, images, and texts. Branding your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign using visual identity elements, like your logo, promotes brand awareness.

Once you brand your campaign, the next step is monitoring whether the changes have an impact. With innovative PPC software such as WordStream, you can track essential KPIs and metrics such as ad frequency.

Frequency helps you understand how often particular users view your ads within a given period.

You can monitor the click-through rate (CTR) to evaluate your ads’ performance. If you’re not using any software, divide the number of clicks by the number of people who viewed the ads, then multiply by 100.

A high CTR indicates exceptional ad performance, while a low CTR means you must rethink your strategy.

Integrity

Katniss has an excellent strategy to survive in the arena by proving she has what’s necessary to be victorious. She knows her strengths in archery, and she focuses on showcasing them.

Your brand’s integrity is everything because losing integrity and credibility costs your business. The quality score metric evaluates your brand’s reliability in providing relevant information.

High quality shows that search engines consider your website a reliable information source. Google Ads offers discounts for high-quality scores, lowering your cost per conversion while boosting the ROI.

As Blumberg, author of Return on Integrity, highlights, integrity is not a brand but what makes your brand name real, authentic, and believable. Remember that integrity and transparency will always succeed, so consider these aspects in your marketing OKRs.

Competition 

From the movie’s beginning, Peeta and Katniss know that there can only be one winner. However, Katniss nurtured relationships with other attributes fighting in the same competition.

If you stop seeing every other business as the enemy, you’ll discover aspects you can adopt to succeed. For instance, the conversion rates are different in various industries.

The best way to evaluate your conversion rate per industry standards is by comparing it with similar businesses around you. 

Think Outside the Box

Katniss faces numerous curve balls throughout her experience, but there is no point where she gives up when things get tough. On the contrary, she’s constantly trying to find ways out, even if it means working with the enemy.

Regardless of your previous strategies, there’s always another option. But it’s essential to understand when to change or modify your tactics.

The best way to gain these insights is by tracking conversion and search KPIs. They help you determine what is working to avoid channeling your funds to efforts that will only pay off short term.

Wrapping Up

The business world is dynamic and highly competitive. However, with the right tools and insights, there’s space for you to thrive. Understanding how conversion and paid search KPIs affect your business is a great place to start, and may the odds ever be in your favor.


Author Bio:

Sasi Dharan, Marketing Manager, Profit.co, 

In his current role, he leads the Digital Marketing Team. He has a decade of experience in Project management, Operation Excellence Consulting, and Digital Marketing. He is passionate about learning new technologies and strategies in marketing and deploying them in his organization. 

Linkedin : linkedin.com/in/sasiceo

Twitter :  https://twitter.com/SasiDha56015764

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