While generic top-level goals such as driving traffic and impressions are important, aligning your PPC campaigns with your ultimate business objectives is crucial.

This is where the concept of conversion values comes into play. Conversion values are the specific actions or metrics you're asking ad platforms to prioritize, guiding their machine learning efforts toward your desired outcomes.

To help marketers decide on and hone in on the right goals, we drew on insights from our recent chat with Scott Carruthers, Head of PPC at Journey Further, and one of the most respected voices in the PPC industry.

Scott has over 11 years of experience running award-winning campaigns, and is a leading voice on LinkedIn, sharing his thoughts on the latest trends and developments in the PPC world. 

With conversion values (or ‘optimization points’) proving increasingly important for performance marketers due to tightening budgets and greater expectations, we couldn’t think of anyone better than Scott to discuss the benefits of adopting a more value-driven approach to campaigns.

Over the next few minutes, we’ll explore what conversion values are, why they are important, and how to choose the right ones for your PPC campaigns, as well as touch on other key topics Scott spoke about during his episode of the Paid Media Lab podcast.

Watch the full episode here, or read on for the key takeaways:

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Timestamps: 

00:00 - Intro

02:00 - Google's Power Pair: Implications going forward

05:04 - Optimization points in PPC: Why they’re important

09:01 - Factors to consider when choosing optimization points

12:25 - Adopting a value-based approach

16:51 - Case study: Using availability and competitor data

20:00 - Defining conversion points, leveraging AI, and refining PPC

21:38 - New user signals incorporated into broad match 

23:08 - Final thoughts / outro

For all of Scott’s tips, tricks, and insights on conversion values, moving to a value-based approach, and more – watch Scott’s full episode above, and make sure to subscribe to the Lunio YouTube channel to watch full episodes of the Paid Media Lab podcast, featuring insights from top PPC professionals. 

Alternatively, follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music to get new episodes delivered straight to your feed.

What are conversion values?

A conversion value (or ‘optimization point’) is a specific goal you’re aiming for in your PPC campaigns. It's the metric or action that you're telling the platform to optimize toward, and good campaigns will—in at least some way—be centered around a main conversion value.

Unlike a conversion, which is an action taken on your website (like a form fill or purchase), a conversion value doesn't necessarily have to be a user action. It could be a value you assign or even a theoretical metric.

For example, a conversion value could be a qualified lead, a phone call, or even a brochure download—each potentially carrying different values.

The key here is that the conversion value is how you direct the machine learning within the platform to achieve your specific business goals.

It’s about steering the algorithm, aligning it with your objectives rather than just letting it run on its own.

Why are conversion values important?

In simpler terms, conversion values tell the ad platform exactly what you want to achieve, helping you ensure the platform’s AI/machine learning algorithms are working toward your specific goals.

This alignment is crucial for driving real business value, not just vanity metrics. Without clear conversion values, you might end up targeting the wrong things, wasting budget on metrics that don't contribute to your bottom line.

With no clear conversion values in place, largely automated campaign types such as Performance Max (PMax) have been known to run up costs, waste ad spend on bad placements, and generally cause headaches for marketing departments around the world.

The platform’s AI will optimize based on the signals it receives, but it won’t always prioritize the exact audiences, placements, or strategies you might prefer. This can lead to inefficiencies if left unchecked, making it crucial to continuously monitor performance and adjust inputs where possible.

Conversion values don’t stop wasted ad spend completely—after all, automated campaign types operate as a ‘black box,’ meaning it’s hard to know exactly where all your ad spend is going—but they do help nudge the algorithm away from waste and toward far better paid media results.

Common mistakes when selecting conversion values

According to Scott, one of the most common mistakes is failing to align conversion values with actual business goals.

Many businesses miss the mark by focusing on vanity metrics that do not necessarily relate to the overall business objectives. This can include focusing on metrics such as impressions or traffic, which are often loosely aligned with overall business objectives.

While those metrics can be useful, focusing on them as your primary conversion value might not be the best approach if your goal is to generate qualified leads or sales.

Another common mistake is "jumping the gun" by choosing conversion values too far down the conversion funnel.

For instance, a business might aim to optimize for sales when they do not have sufficient data or tracking in place to support this goal.

This can result in inefficient campaigns and missed opportunities. It is important to find a sweet spot between the top-level vanity metrics and the more advanced conversion points.

How to choose the right conversion values

Choosing the right conversion value requires a deep understanding of your business goals, conversion paths, and data. In our conversation, Scott discussed the crucial factors to consider:

• Understand your conversion path: Before selecting a conversion value, map out your complete conversion path, understanding each step of the lead qualification process.
• Evaluate data availability: Consider how much data you have at each stage of the funnel. If you only get a few qualified sales a month, you may need to optimize for something earlier in the funnel, like leads.
• Align with business goals: Ensure the conversion value directly relates to your ultimate business goals. Whether it is leads, traffic, or something else, your conversion value needs to align with what you are trying to achieve.
• Assess time to conversion: Consider how long it takes for a lead to be qualified and converted. If your sales cycle is long, it may be best to choose a conversion value earlier in the funnel, like leads.
• Test and refine: Experiment with different conversion values and assess their impact. PPC success often comes from continuous optimization.

In short, you need to understand your business and how your business converts, which can be a case-by-case basis. Once you have these considerations down, test different values to see what works and what doesn’t.

From lead volume to value-based bidding

Another key topic of discussion in our conversation with Scott was value-based bidding.

Many businesses start with a focus on maximizing lead volume. While this may seem effective, it can often result in a large number of unqualified leads that do not translate into revenue. 

To improve this, it is important to shift focus from lead volume to a value-based bidding approach.

This involves optimizing for the value of a lead, as not all leads are created equal. Some leads might be worth more than others depending on factors such as the type of action taken (e.g., phone call vs form fill), or what offerings the customer is interested in.

To transition to value-based bidding, you’ll need to:

• Implement proper tracking: Ensure you are tracking all of the important conversion points and feeding those values into your PPC platform.
• Understand lead value: Determine the value of each type of lead to your business, this is a crucial aspect of transitioning to value-based bidding.
• Switch bidding strategies: Make the switch from bidding strategies that optimize for conversions to those that optimize for value, such as target return on ad spend (ROAS) bidding strategies.

By implementing value-based bidding, you are going to be able to optimize for actual business value, not just lead volume.

Case study: Boots Hearing Care 

Scott also spoke about a case study from Journey Further, where they worked with Boots Hearing Care. 

The team scraped availability data from the Boots Hearing Care website to understand when different stores had availability for hearing tests. They combined this with competitor availability data to understand how they compared to the competition.

This data was then used to set up conversion value rules within Google Ads. If a store had availability, the conversion value for that location would be increased, which meant Google was more likely to target people in that area. If a store was fully booked, the conversion value would be decreased, meaning Google would stop targeting users in that location.

This resulted in a 31% increase in bookings in desired locations and a 20% decrease in the cost per booking. This highlights the power of using optimization points and creative data analysis to maximize your PPC campaigns.

The Power Pair: Broad match and Performance Max

Scott also gave us his take on Google's "power pair" narrative–a strategy where you use broad match and performance max campaigns together. 

The theory here is that by using broad match more in your account, there is less need for exact match keywords. The search campaigns will take priority when you have a keyword that exactly matches the search term. 

When that doesn't happen, performance max is allowed to take priority. This means that performance max will show up more, and therefore take up more spend and drive better results.

This pairing is a subtle way of Google moving users away from keywords, and towards using Performance Max campaigns more. It’s a move toward automation and relying more heavily on Google's AI capabilities–something Scott advised all marketers to take into consideration and prepare for going forward. 

Key takeaways & final thoughts

We covered a lot of ground on this episode of the Paid Media Lab. Huge thanks to Scott Carruthers for sharing his valuable insights and experience with us. If you're not already, we'd highly recommend giving Scott a follow on LinkedIn, where he regularly helps PPC experts gain a deeper understanding of PPC.

To recap, here are the key takeaways from our conversation with Scott:

• Conversion values are the specific goals you're aiming for in your PPC campaigns, guiding the platform's machine learning
• Align your conversion values with business goals, not just vanity metrics
• Understand your conversion path and data before selecting a conversion value
• Consider transitioning from a focus on lead volume to a value-based bidding approach
• Test and refine your conversion values to maximize your PPC results
• Be realistic about your bidding targets, and start from your current performance levels
• Google’s "power pair" of broad match and Performance Max is a way to move toward greater automation, and a potential keywordless future
• AI is likely to become increasingly advanced in 2025--marketers must remain informed and adaptable

Make sure to watch the full episode of the Paid Media Lab podcast on YouTube for additional tips and takeaways from Scott. Alternatively, follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music to get new episodes delivered straight to your feed.