How can you tell if your marketing strategy is working? For some companies, it’s as easy as seeing if sales have increased, or foot traffic into your shop has improved. For other businesses, it takes a little analysis to see if the efforts of a specific campaign have paid off.
All companies need to know where to spend their money, and a marketing budget is no different. There are several ways companies can track if their campaigns are making a difference. Here are a few that you may want to investigate.
Website Analytics
By using this method of analysis, business leaders can see who is visiting your site and from what source did they originate. This lets you know which marketing tactics are producing the largest number of clicks and how many of those clicks convert to either sales or leads.
If you are new to the analytics world, check out Google Analytics. It can compile data for you in an easily manageable way. It can also create a detailed report on your traffic, bounce rates, backlinks, pay-per-click campaigns and many other aspects.
Ad Network Conversion Tracking
If you are checking on your paid campaigns rather than organic searches, you will want to use a conversion tracking tool. All of the major ad networks or channels, like Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, Google AdWords or Instagram provide these for their users. This is critical because conversion tracking shows how effective your campaign is performing in areas such as phone calls, website purchases, newsletter sign-ups, app downloads, and more.
Phone Tracking
At some point in your life you have called a company to request service or a product and been asked, “Where did you hear about us?” This is one form of phone tracking.
Another form of phone tracking involves more technology. Phone tracking uses Dynamic Number Insertion, or DNI for short, to assign different phone numbers to different visitors based on the source that they used to find you. This type of digital phone tracking means that if a mobile user found your ad on Google or Facebook and clicked on the ad to get your phone number or fill out a contact form, you would then know where they found you.
This information can help you understand which online ads and campaigns are bringing in the largest number of leads, which may turn into customers.
CRM Tracking
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms are an extremely powerful way to track which campaigns and ads are bringing in your customers. Using a CRM, sales professionals create profiles for all of their prospects, listing their name, company, phone number, lead source, and any information that presents itself throughout the sales process. Marketing teams can filter or sort your prospects by campaign ID, or lead source, referral program which gives you real time access to which campaigns are working and those that are not.
Are you looking for ways to track your online campaigns? Check out our workshop on, “Online Advertising and Tracking Results.”
