Whether you’re new to digital marketing or have been using it for years now, there are times when you need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy.
You could be using all forms of digital marketing, such as emails, web messaging, social media marketing, and so on.
But when it comes to measuring the results, you may find yourself in a conundrum.
Believe us; it’s totally normal.
Studies show that more than half of the marketers are not fully aware of the ROI for their campaigns.
Nonetheless, measuring the results of your online campaigns is necessary, and perhaps, cannot be overlooked.
More so, digital technology these days allows you to mine, arrange, and even evaluate the data with ease.
So, wondering how to do it the right way?
Well, luckily, you’ve just landed upon the right piece of content.
Keep reading to find all the answers that you’ve been seeking until now.
Outline What Conversions Mean to You
First things first, before you even get to measuring the data, you should decide what you want out of your campaigns.
Depending upon your purpose of running online campaigns, you might want more sales or drive more traffic to your website or page.
Today, the technology is so sophisticated that you can even pin the exact pain point for your ideal audience.
For instance, if you’re an e-commerce store owner, you might want to know how many users show interest in your products. Likewise, you may also wish to know how many finally make the purchase and how many abandon the cart before completing a purchase.
It should help you identify any shortcomings in your sales funnel. And accordingly, you can make improvements to your campaigns.
Set Up Tracking on Your Website
Once you’re done deciding what you wish to track, the next thing you need is a tracker.
Most content management systems support tracking extensions from ads systems.
For instance, Google ads tracker and Facebook pixel tracker are generally patched to the website’s original code.
The benefit?
Well, the tracker allows tracking the exact conversion metrics that you need to evaluate your ROI.
Besides, setting up a tracker would allow you to compare the overall performance of your campaign. Meaning, you can compare two or more ads campaigns and their performance directly. There are other tools that track web & user behavior analytics in a little more depth that can really help with future campaigns as well, such as tracking user demographics.
As a result, you can even compare which ones are performing better than the others.
The key takeaway here is to understand the overall customer journey for your website. In other words, you can know how far your customers travel, starting from your paid ad on Google or Facebook to making the ultimate purchase.
Use UTM Codes in URLs
Wait, what?
Technically speaking, UTM codes are also trackers that you set up on specific URLs in your website.
Marketers use it to track the performance of specific web pages in Google Analytics. You can also seek help from an Innovative Technology Partner to patch up the UTM tags on your website. And thereby, get the track of sources and audience type on your Google Analytics account.
Before we move on, it’s essential to know why you need it in the first place.
Consider this scenario – you know how much traffic you’re receiving on your website. You’d probably also know what keywords are bringing you the traffic and for what page on your website.
But, all this data is generally categorized into organic and paid rankings only.
Meaning, you can only track if your traffic is coming from organic search or through your paid campaigns. But, what about other campaigns and sources, like your influencer marketing campaigns or backlinks?
Well, the UTM codes can help.
These are general tags attached to a URL that helps in identifying the exact source of your traffic.
For instance, you might be running a branding campaign with social media influencers. The influencer could be running your posts each day and driving traffic and leads to your e-commerce website.
With the help of the UTM code, you can know precisely where the traffic is coming from. And consequently, you can also measure if your campaigns are successfully performing or not.
Tracking Other Campaigns
Until now, you’ve learned how you can track the performance of your ads campaigns and influencer marketing efforts. But, of course, there could be other campaigns you might be running.
For example, you might be using Google ads to receive calls on your phone.
In most cases, all you might get is the number of calls you receive and how much each call costs you.
But, what about the source of the phone calls? Which keywords are bringing you more valuable calls and which ones are not?
More importantly, the region and the location data from where the calls are getting maximum conversions.
All this data can help you design the ideal user persona for your services or products. And as a result, you would be better able to plan your campaigns accordingly.
Well, to ease the tracking for phone calls, there are various third-party tools that you can link up with your Google analytics. And the best part is that you can do it without needing any formal education in coding or something tech-savvy.
More so, some tools even let you record the calls for further qualitative analysis. You can listen to the recordings, track customer responses and accordingly modify your pitch to improve sales.
Isn’t it great?
The Takeaway
Tracking the performance of your marketing campaigns is like reviewing your class tests.
Although the modern marketing tools and channels are pretty sophisticated, the marketing practices, in essence, are still intuitive.
It is always a hit-and-trial game with marketing campaigns. Based on your past experiences and data history, you can create new strategies. But, would they be successful or how far they would reach will still depend mainly on the customers’ mindset.
As the adage goes – “the customer’s mind is a black box” – you can try and keep trying until you find success. But, success does not entirely depend upon trials.
With the help of reliable data sourced from suitable sources, you can understand your customers. You can even design a mind map of their behaviors which could further help you improve your marketing strategies only.
In a nutshell, you need insights of your customers more than you need insights for your business to be successful in the digital world.