conversion tracking

How Do We Track Online Conversions?

As the person directly responsible for your marketing campaigns, there is a high chance that you will set up a new one every day. This process involves creativity, research, the actual implementation, and, of course, reporting. The main challenge comes when and if the conversions can’t be tracked to a specific communication channel. Yes, we know that they exist, but we cannot form plans to adapt a future strategy if we lack a clear picture of the current campaign.

An an entrepreneur, you should be aware of the importance of results measurement and accurate reporting. This will greatly help you in the future, allowing you to make decisions regarding the allocation of the budgets to each channel. Most of the time, in order to track conversions you will only need a link that contains the necessary measuring parameters.

There are numerous tools that help us in this objective and thanks to which we can follow the customer flow, to identify the exact medium of a conversion. Google Analytics has developed its own tool that tracks conversions and provides accurate details about their source. Thus, we can follow them by inserting the UTM parameters.

UTM parameters are short text codes added to the campaign URL for a closer tracking of the recorded data. They are rendered in different programs, such as Google Analytics. As we mentioned earlier, Google Analytics gives you the ability to measure conversions using a URL Builder.

To better understand the whole process and its benefits we will consider the following example. For the Marketing Consulting service we’ll make 2 posts, one on the Facebook Page and the other for a Facebook Ads campaign.

  1. Facebook Post

According to the image below, we need the following information:

  • The website URL which will be linked in our post;
  • The source in which the campaign will run, namely Facebook;
  • The campaign type (PPC, banner, etc.), in this case a simple post;
  • The campaign name, which help us identify it more easily in Analytics.

Additionally, you can fill in a few more fields that are not mandatory, but they can provide a more accurate tracking. We will limit ourselves to the required ones which are sufficient in the current context.

The generated URL can be either used as it appears in the link or you can opt to shorten it. Regardless of your choice, the results will be the same and the conversions will be tracked in Analytics.

  1. Facebook Ads Post

The strategy for monitoring conversions is almost identical, the only difference being that in the ”Campaign Medium” field we will write ”CPC” instead of ”post”. Thus, the new URL will look like this: https://klainagency.com/services/digital-marketing-consulting/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=sales

It seems easy for starters to track the conversions and in this case the reality reflects this. Next, we will visit Google Analytics to find out where we can monitor the results of the previous 2 posts.

Because we named both posts ”sales”, they will appear together as follows:

Once we access the campaign, the data will look like the image below. Thus, we will know exactly the number of conversions for each medium. Apart from this statistic, in Google Analytics we can discern information such as: number of users, number of sessions, pages accessed, time spent on the page and conversions generated (in this case how many people filled out the contact form).

In this way, tracking each conversion (regardless of its nature) becomes a straightforward task. Furthermore, it becomes easier to optimize previous campaigns based on current results.

Site banners

In order to offer a broader view of the campaigns and establish the importance of tracking, we will also discuss the example of website banners.

Thus, if you own a site, and the implementation strategy includes the placement of a banner that links to the campaign, it’s important that your URL contains the necessary tracking parameters. The website is the online store of any business, that is “open” 24 hours a day, ready to meet any customer need.

In this context, the banner must lead the customer to the campaign, being vital for us to be able to track its origin. In the image below you can see where to insert both the banner and the campaign URL.

 

We are at your disposal for other tips and you can contact us right here, where we put a link with URL Builder.

Etichete