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Four Ways To Better Track Your Digital Marketing Tactics

Posted at Jan 31, 2019 6:21:43 PM by Jordan Kremer | Share

When managing a marketing budget or advertising strategies one of the first things that comes to mind is How can I track conversions in digital marketing to determine success. Naturally all marketers must report their results to either a boss, share holder or a businesses pocketbook. It’s common knowledge that Digital marketing is easier to report on as it has tangible numbers associated with it, but that does not mean there isn’t challenges.

How To Better Track Your Digital Marketing

How to Track & Check On Your Digital Marketing

 

KPI Values & BENCH MARKING

Before getting into tracking tools, web analytics and processes, it is important to lay a base line of steadfast rules when determining success across multiple digital marketing tactics and channels. Although each campaign may have many tactics and vary in its goals or purpose, the KPIs or Key Performance Indicators chosen should be a benchmark for determining success.  

The creation of these KPIs will help bring consistency to your review when determining what value each digital marketing tactic brings to the table. During the creation of indicators, it’s important to think about the entire customer journey more so than the dollars and cents of a transaction or appointment booking. Of course, the bottom line is a great indicator of success, but it does not always tell the entire story. Some examples of KPIs frequently used are views on certain pages, clicks on individual buttons, how many form completions occur or how long individuals stay on landing pages before leaving. Each of these data points tells a story about a user’s experience and typically can be associated with a monetary value by backing into it from a sale. If you know one sale is worth $100 and on average, it takes five form completions and one hundred button clicks to get a sale then we can roughly associate one form completion with the value of $20 and a button click with $1 of monetary value. Although this is not a fool proof formula, it will at least give you a bench mark when comparing the various digital marketing tactics that are utilized.

Usage of Google Analytics

Now that your KPIs are set, the next tracking element is a website analytics platform. There are many tools out there to track the visitors on your website or digital properties, however Google Analytics is a free tool used by more than an estimated 50 million websites according to the Marketing Land website. When using Google Analytics, there are a plethora of data points to choose from or as little as you would like, depending on what is needed by the users. Most marketers are relatively familiar with Google Analytics, but if you need help installing or utilizing the tool, please contact us for support.

Although Google Analytics comes with great data points out of the box, there are additional set up steps that can take your KPIs to the next level in reporting.

  • The first resource to consider utilizing are UTM Perimeters. These powerful tracking elements can be built here and do wonders for tracking off site sources that are driving website traffic to your URLs. The tool forces Google Analytics to report the incoming traffic the way you determine in order to get much more granular with your traffic review. We personally use UTMs for every social post and channel that sends traffic back to our site.
  • The second element to consider are events. Google Developers describe events as user interactions that can be tracked independently from a web page or screen load. Typically used for button clicks or video plays, events are usually higher level interaction KPIs that help to tell a story behind the full user experience and journey within a website.
  • The last element and likely the most important are goal completions. By visiting the admin panel, Google Analytics offers the capability to implement goal completions based on pages visited, events that occurred, session tendencies and more. These goals are KPIs in themselves that help benchmark each traffic sources success as discussed above. Additionally, a monetary value can be attributed to a goal completion in the goal set up process. Although these goals are little more technical to set up, the development team at your business should be able to assist. If you need additional help, please contact us for support.

 

Phone Call Tracking & Quality Listening

Phone calls are a great indicator of success in the digital world. Although younger generations spend plenty of time online and prefer a speedy process, a phone call is still preferred by a large segment of user bases. With technology advancement, tools like CallRail can help to attribute phone calls back to the source that a customer found your number through. By using dynamic tracking numbers, displayed phone numbers can switch based on the source a visitor comes to your site through and even record phone calls. These recordings and calls can be used as powerful KPIs for the quality and quantity of calls per source. The set up of tools like CallRail can be technical and should be administered by your website provider. If you would like more information on phone call tracking or need help to set up your tools, please contact us for support.

 

CRM Implementation

The last implementation to consider is a client relationship management system or CRM. Although the most expensive of the tools presented, companies like HubSpot can help close the gap on attributing success to specific digital marketing efforts. A CRM can track sales back to their originating date as well as spread the profit of a new client to the tactics used to acquire them. Additionally, CRM platforms have many applications that allow marketing planning and execution to bring all tactics under one roof so to speak. 

 

We hope these tips or steps have resonated with your goals. If you would like more information on any of the presented content, please do not hesitate to reach out for assistance. Additionally, download our free guide to Digital marketing in 2019.

 

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