Offline conversion tracking (OCT) is one advertising tool that can help you get more from your PPC spend.
In brief, advertisers use offline conversion tracking when they integrate CRM data on customer lifetime value (LTV) / purchase history (ecommerce) or down-funnel lead activity (B2B) into Google, Meta and/or LinkedIn campaigns to get valuable insights or tell the algorithms more about their very best customers – and how to find more users like them.
If you’re even doing the basics of using OCT data in your ad campaigns, you’re ahead of the curve.
But to truly nail your competitive advantages, start using the following list of OCT best practices and testing techniques.
1. Assign values to your conversion events
Believe it or not, many B2B advertisers don’t know when a lead is worth to them. If you can’t calculate the value of a lead, demo request, booked meeting, etc., you won’t be able to use OCT with much precision, so let’s start by defining values.
To start calculating your values, work backward based on real sales data to calculate the average worth of events along the buying journey. That mindset alone will help you stop focusing on getting the most leads for your spend, which typically leads to spam.
Some ad platforms will allow you to optimize towards more than one conversion action at a time (which I’ll cover in a second). Numerical values tell the platforms which action is the higher priority while feeding more information to the platforms to dial in bidding like tROAS.
2. Test optimizing for one or multiple actions in Google
Google allows advertisers to optimize for one or multiple conversion actions at the campaign or account level. If you have enough volume, it’s always best practice to start by trying to optimize campaigns for your most valuable action (usually closed/won sales).