How successful was your last marketing campaign? Can you tell how many people converted on your website? Was it worth the money you spent on the campaign? These are very important questions you should be able to answer at the end of a marketing campaign. Without these answers, how will you know what works and what does not?
Historically it used to be pretty difficult to track the ROI on marketing campaigns. Banner ads were purchased, print ads were placed, emails were sent out, lists were purchased and there was no reliable way to track the success of those spent marketing dollars. But those days are long gone. There are now many free options for tracking the ROI on marketing campaigns, which leaves you with no excuse to establish some tracking mechanisms before starting a marketing campaign.
Here are just a few easy ROI tactics:
Multiple Forms
Every one of your campaigns should have a call-to-action. Typically the best thing to do is to have a form to capture people taking action on your website, whether it is downloading a whitepaper, webinar, demo or a coupon. One of the best ways to track the ROI on a campaign is to create a separate download form for each campaign. That way each campaign has a unique form easily allowing you to run a report on the amount of people that took action from your campaign. The potential downside to this form of tracking is that if you may end up with many duplicate forms which can be tough for keeping them all up-to-date.
Goals
Another way to track the ROI on your marketing campaigns is by using Goals in Google Analytics. Here you can create goals for people that took action from your campaign. I suggest using the confirmation page after a form is completed as your Goal. That way you are running a report on the people that downloaded your promoted item. If you don’t use a form you can also set up a Goal for people that just visited the webpage.
To set up the Goal tracking for a webpage simply go to Admin, click on your website profile and click the Goals tab. Next, create your new goal. There are 3 steps, choose a Goal name, select “Active,” choose Goal Type “URL Destination.” Under goal destination you will need to add the URL you wish to track and choose head match.
Now that your goal is set up, the next thing to do is to track the success of the campaign. To see the performance, go to your reports click on the Conversions tab; next click on Goals and then Overview. At the top you can select the Goal you’d like to run a report on. Once you choose the Goal click on “Source/Medium” to see where visitors came from that resulted in a goal completion. This is a more broad way to report on the ROI of a campaign, but it still provides a good overview without having to create duplicate forms.
URL Builder
Another easy way to track the success of your marketing campaigns is by using Google’s free URL Builder. This tool lets you create numerous unique urls for the same webpage. An example of how this can be helpful is if you create a new call-to-action webpage and want to promote it from a variety of channels (i.e. website, Facebook, newsletter, PPC). With the URL Builder you can create a unique URL for each marketing channel. This enables you to run a report in Google Analytics on the success of each marketing channel by running reports on the unique urls.
Don’t be left in the dark about where your money is going. Instead, arm yourself with the knowledge to make better decisions on future campaigns. Try one of the above tactics, or if you need help getting started don’t hesitate to contact us at Bop Design.
