So, you’ve built out a marketing campaign or two for your small business and now you need to start tweaking it to improve the sales conversion rate. Smart move. You should always aim to maximize what you have in place!
If you don’t know your KPIs yet then you should be tracking more than what I’ve outlined below. But this post is a good starting point for busy business owners that are trying to do it all themselves.
PSST! If you need a fun tool to help you track some of these #s going forward – check out our Conversions Tracking Sheet.
TIP: To really get a sense of what is working it’s recommended to have at least 100 people through your campaign (per source) before you can really look at and trust the numbers. It’s also super easy to turn that into a %.
You’ll want to track the numbers from each source so you can gauge which source delivers the highest converting traffic. It’s also recommended to do this organically so that you’re not paying to improve your conversion. Instead, you use your organic (or free) traffic to test it out and make it the best converting campaign possible. THEN you put paid ads behind it. And tracking ads would put more numbers and conversions to track e.g. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).
If you have posts and ‘hooks’ from several places across the internet, and you want to track the conversion of each, you have a few options.
- Use Google UTM parameters for each link and clearly define which platform this link is being used on.
- Build out a different ‘landing page’ for each platform.
- Use a paid platform that tracks these for you e.g. Kissmetrics
Obviously, if you’re on a budget I recommend the first option. In fact, unless you are customizing a landing page for a specific targeted group the second option would be ridiculous! The third is great if you have the budget. And to be honest, most business owners are too busy to do #1 or #2 on an on-going basis. You can glean where your traffic comes from in a general sense in Google Analytics but beware that the numbers will always be a bit off and shouldn’t be taken as a firm number – just an approximate.
Google Analytics is your Conversion Friend!
Google Analytics is a monster of a machine when it comes to tracking and can seem a bit overwhelming at times. However, setting up Conversion Goals is straightforward and will go a long way to giving you a 30,000 ft view of your campaign.
If you’re tracking opt-ins or online purchases then you should be setting up a destination goal for the ‘Thank-you’ page. If you are doing an online purchase then put the purchase value in there.
If you head to the menu and go to Acquisition>Overview>Conversion>[GOAL] it will show you the top traffic channels to your goal. The columns on the right will show you your conversion rate for each channel. Just be mindful of the date range at the top.
Now, this is the Coles/Cliff Notes version so if you combine the goals with UTM parameters you’ll get campaign results e.g. email vs event vs Instagram, etc. Spend some time and set up a simple Goal to see what it can show you. It’s a great (and free) tool.
Marketing Conversion Calculation
So, there are a few marketing conversions you’ll want to track depending upon the type of marketing campaign or promotion you’re running. We’re sticking to online marketing campaigns but if you’re running an event you’ll have other variables to track. The below suggestions vary widely and greatly depend on what your goals are. Are you growing the top of your funnel (list growth) or leads or bottom of funnel (lead conversions) or anything in between.
- Email: Open rate, clickthrough rate, conversion rates (you can do this by list or segment if it makes sense), subscriber list growth rate, unengaged subscribers, unsubscribes.
- Social media: click through, purchase/subscribe, conversion rate (do this by channel if you can), followers-to-list conversion.
- Website: Traffic (unique visits), opt-ins (best done by channel), bounce rate (how long they stayed on your page), referral traffic.
These are basic things to look at and there is more you can dig into but you probably won’t have time to dig in each week. So, track the numbers on a weekly basis and schedule a deeper dive once a month. There are also a bunch of programs to help you keep all these things in one place like cyfe.com.
Keeping an eye on your numbers not only helps you learn which areas to improve upon, it also helps you learn more about where your business gains the most traction e.g. email campaigns, SEO, etc.
