Figuring out where your website traffic is coming from can be difficult! In-person events, social media comments, or multi-touch campaigns are just a few marketing scenarios that make tracking an imperfect science. Not to mention, removal or opt-out participants make tracking attribution truly elusive.
With so many tracking obstacles and mysteries, you might be ready to give up on tracking attribution altogether. Luckily, this post sheds light on the best ways to overcome common pitfalls.
What Is Tracking Attribution?
Tracking attribution reveals the pathways your potential clients take from the moment they set eyes on your brand, to the moment they (hopefully!) purchase your services. The journey your audience travels exposes many of your marketing strengths and weaknesses.
For example, with tracking attribution, you can follow a potential client’s click path from your recent post on Instagram, to your newest campaign landing page, to your “about” page. From that trail, you might suspect that the person was intrigued by your offerings and dug a bit deeper to learn more about you.
By pooling hundreds or thousands of click trails together, you can discover helpful patterns. Successful marketers use tracking attribution data to plan improvements for their marketing campaigns.
Why is Tracking Attribution Important?
Without tracking attribution, marketers can’t perform at their best! Inaccurate or scarce metrics will completely confuse a solid business plan, leaving your entire team scrambling to correct unnecessary mistakes.
With tracking attribution, your business can soar! Have a look at three powerful reasons you need tracking attribution.
You’ll Better Direct Your Marketing Budget to the Strongest Campaigns
Accurate tracking attribution gives credit where credit is due. This means that your most effective marketing strategies will turn up as-such in your metrics.
The last mistake you want to make in business is to inaccurately distribute your marketing budget—wasting precious time, energy, and money. Tracking attribution (when done correctly) proves where more of your advertising moola should be invested.
You Can Produce More Content That Your Audience Loves
Have you ever played the game “hot or cold?” One person hides an object, then guides a second player towards the item with temperature descriptions. “You’re getting colder,” indicates the person is going farther from the hidden object. “You’re getting warmer,” means they’re on the right track!
Tracking attribution figures are like that. High metrics reveal when a marketing campaign is hot (people love the concept) while low metrics indicate the campaign is cold. Marketers can use their compiled data to produce more successful campaigns, and steer clear of ideas served on ice.
You’ll Discover the Channels and Lead Magnets that Are Generating the Most Traffic
Maybe most of your sales traffic comes from your social media accounts, marketing emails, or organic searches. Only tracking attribution can tell you for certain! Once you understand which channels are gaining the most traction, you can focus on them more.
Take notice of which of your website pages hold intrigue versus which pages don’t. This can help you make improvements to your content—strengthening your weaker site tabs—or shine a light on your strongest pages, so you can make more of an effort to share them.
5 Tracking Attribution Best Practices to Follow
If you’re ready to make the most of tracking attribution, you’re in the right place. Here are five helpful tips to accurately use tracking attribution.
Use UTM Links
UTM links are a helpful tool when it comes to tracking attribution! By adding a simple UTM code to the back of a URL web address, you gain the ability to collect data on your audience’s click origins.
And you don’t have to be an expert to use UTM codes. Take a little time to devise some consistent naming conventions (for example, create your UTM codes using dates to reference specific campaigns). A UTM builder can do the rest!
Start Tracking Your Email Clicks
Using your analytics software, take notice of how many of your marketing emails are actually opened. Then compare that number with how many people click the links in the email (to suggest they’re reading and engaged with your content).
This sort of tracking attribution reveals which of your marketing ideas are strong and/or well-executed. If loads of people are opening your email, but not sticking around to interact with it, your campaign may be lacking.
Use a CRM and Take Notes on Your Offline Marketing Efforts
While UTM links can help with tracking attribution online, you need a CRM system to collect tracking data offline. This will help you keep the record straight as to which types of marketing strategies serve you the best.
Some types of offline marketing include:
- Business cards
- Pamphlets
- Newspaper articles
- Magazine articles
- Radio advertisements
You can unveil which strategies brought in the most (or least) clients by asking during early interactions. A brief online survey or asking straight-out via email or on the phone will do the trick.
Connect Your Data Together with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free and easy way to gather your tracking attribution data. It can pool your metrics from your UTM links and your CRM to color a complete picture about your marketing campaigns.
Afterall, you want the work that you do with tracking attribution figures to be quick and to-the-point! You don’t want to pause before every marketing team meeting to collect and analyze data from various sources when Google Analytics can do it for you.
Related: Creating a Custom Google Analytics Dashboard
Try a Social Listening Tool
You may have a good understanding of what your potential clients are saying about you on your social media pages (if you take the time to read through every comment). But it’s much more difficult to get a complete understanding of what folks are saying across other pages.
Social listening tools allow you to scour social media pages (including those that don’t belong to you) and see what people are saying about your brand. You can search using keywords to uncover general thoughts on your industry, the latest and greatest services, or more specific love/hate comments about you.
Tracking attribution is not only helpful—it’s essential to build a complete and accurate marketing strategy! Use these helpful tips to ensure you’re getting the most out of your metrics.
A professional marketer can help you monitor your marketing to maximize success in your business. As an expert, I’m here to support you—click here to learn more.
