Marginal Metrics: Why You’ve Got CPAs All Wrong

Why would you run a marketing campaign that costs more than the profit it generates? As absurd as it might sound, this situation actually represents one that many marketers unknowingly find themselves in.

Let’s say you’re running all of the marketing for a single-product ecommerce store. The shop makes a $20 profit from each sale before taking into account any marketing spend. Now let’s say that someone pitched you an idea on how you could generate more sales by spending $30 of marketing dollars per sale. Chances are you’d scoff at the idea, right? However, even though marketing campaigns can appear profitable at an aggregate level if the cost per sale is below $20, it doesn’t mean that every sale generated is costing the brand less than $20. That means that even when we’re profiting at an aggregate level, we can still be losing money. To understand why this is the case, we need to understand the idea of marginal metrics.

Expert Tips and Takeaways on iOS 14 Changes

In our March 3 panel discussion, iOS 14, IDFA, & What It All Means for the Digital Marketing Landscape, WITHIN’s CEO Joe Yakuel was joined by Wunderkind Director of Strategy Jon Humphrey, Rockerbox Co-Founder Ron Jacobson, and WITHIN’s Integrated Media Director Michael Choi for a deep dive into what marketers can expect with the new changes launching this spring. 

The privacy-first approach, while ostensibly a win for consumers who want control over their data sharing, will mean a shift in tactics for marketers who want to continue to deliver customized, tailored experiences for users.

The panel’s goal was to give attendees some actionable takeaways for how to prepare for the changes. WITHIN asked attendees to complete a short poll before the discussion began to gauge just how much awareness the audience had of the upcoming changes and their level of preparedness.

Top-5-Content-Marketing-Mistakes on Facebook and How to Fix Them

If you’re marketing on Facebook, congratulations, you are in a select group of every single marketer in the entire world. 

Sarcasm aside, all marketers know that Facebook marketing is a “must-have” communication tool for brands to succeed, but here’s where it gets interesting: only 42% of marketers feel that their Facebook marketing is successful.1 

To put this shocking statistic into context, Facebook’s worldwide advertising revenue is projected to be $94.6 billion dollars 2,  and almost have of those dollars are, according to marketers, unsuccessful. Uh oh.

There is money being left on the table. So much money. Piles and piles of money. (Most of which helped fund Facebook HQ’s rooftop park.)

So how does a brand maximize the value of Facebook marketing to please the marketer, the salesperson, the consumer, and the investors?  How do you not only reach your audience, but engage them and persuade them to act again and again? And how do you stay relevant on Facebook while consistently telling your brand’s story, especially when the pressure to publish grows greater every day?

This article can help unearth these answers to find your brand’s “happy place” on Facebook: where sales output is directly tied to marketing input. But instead of presenting a boring list of “to-do’s,” we want to offer into a more compelling read: a list of “to-don’ts.”

Let’s learn from others’ mistakes to create your very own, very well-oiled Facebook marketing machine.