Ultimately, what constitutes a conversion varies from business to business. For schools, Nicholas Saucedo recommends tracking any web action that demonstrates the value of the school.
These actions can include form submissions, email or phone call clicks, or purchases. These conversions can be tracked in your website analytics tool and Google Ads.
1. Conversion rate
Conversion tracking enables you to measure the value of your website and marketing campaigns. It provides the data you need to understand how many visitors are completing the key web actions that you want them to take, such as purchasing an item, signing up for a newsletter, or submitting a form. You can then use that information to amend your campaign, ad, or keyword settings to achieve the desired result.
For example, if an ecommerce site sees that more people click on the ads for their watch collection than on their T-shirt collection, they can change the campaign settings to show more relevant products and boost sales. Similarly, B2B SaaS companies can track the number of website visitors who request product demos and then identify which keywords or ads are driving those conversions.
The list of possible conversion actions is vast, and deciding what to track can seem overwhelming at first. But it would be best if you focused on conversions that are relevant to your business and aligned with your marketing objectives. For a school, this could include things like online purchases or submissions of forms that are then converted to leads. To make this process simpler, Nicholas Saucedo at HEM recommends adding a conversion-tracking code to a thank you page that is triggered by each purchase or form submission. This makes it simple to record each conversion and then analyze the data with tools such as Google Analytics or Facebook.
2. Conversion value
It’s not always easy to understand how your digital marketing strategies are accomplishing your conversion goals. With so many different platforms to use and a variety of metrics that are reported on, it can feel like pulling teeth to find a clear picture of campaign performance.
Fortunately, some tools help make sense of your data and report on the results of your marketing efforts. These tools optimize goal conversion tracking to collect the data most relevant to your business needs. They also provide a clear picture of the impact of your campaigns on your bottom line.
To get started with conversion tracking, you’ll need to identify what types of actions you want to measure as conversions. These can be anything from phone calls to form fills and purchases. Once you’ve placed your conversions, it’s essential to set them as goals in your PPC account so that you can track the success of your campaigns.
Some conversion actions allow you to assign a monetary value to them, which is helpful for smart bidding in your account. For example, if you know that every form filled on a specific landing page leads to a job worth $1000, you can assign that value to the conversion action and measure the impact of your ads in terms of return on investment (ROI). You can even go one step further and import offline conversions into your digital advertising dashboards so that you have a complete view of your campaign’s performance.
3. Conversion funnel
It’s essential to understand your conversion funnel and how it will affect the performance of your advertising campaigns. For example, you may want to measure how many people are viewing your products or services before they purchase them, or you may want to track the number of times someone visits a website or mobile app after clicking an ad.
To do this, you’ll need to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads and your website analytics tool (such as Google Analytics). In most cases, it is best to use the same reporting standards for all channels.
Setting up conversion tracking is relatively simple and can be done by creating a “Conversion Action” in Google Ads. Once you select a type of conversion, you can name it and add a destination URL. For example, if you want to track how many people fill out your contact form, you can create an action that redirects them to your thank you page.
You can also use remarketing ads to reach potential customers who haven’t yet converted on your website or mobile app. For example, if someone watches a video of your product, you can display remarketing ads to them on YouTube and other platforms, such as Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn. This can help you generate more leads and increase your conversion rate.
4. Attribution
Unlike some other marketing metrics, conversion tracking allows marketers to tie their tactics to business goals directly. This is why attribution reports are so effective when talking to stakeholders, as they offer concrete evidence that your efforts are driving the desired results.
To set up conversion tracking, you need to decide what type of action you want to track and select an attribution model. This is a vital step because the model you choose will impact how your conversions are counted and allocated across your channels.
For example, first-touch attribution gives complete credit for a conversion to the first touchpoint that brought in the customer. This is a straightforward approach, but it can undervalue top-of-funnel marketing efforts. A more advanced option is a multi-source model that recognizes the importance of various touchpoints in driving customers to convert. In this model, the initial touchpoint gets 40% of the conversion credit, while the other 60% is split amongst the touchpoints that contributed to the customer journey up to the lead.
Regardless of which method you choose, once the tracking is in place, you can run a report to see how your various marketing channels are performing. This will help you identify your most successful channels and allocate budgets accordingly. For instance, if you find that search ads are driving the most conversions, you can invest more in this channel.
