Conversion tracking. What is it and why is it so difficult to record? Simply put, it is the means by which media performance is measured against Key Performance Indicators for any given campaign.
But of course, it’s not that simple. Conversion tracking is one of the most difficult things for a digital agency to be able to report on to their clients. This is because they don’t always have all the available data from the client end.
So while it’s an easy enough process to report on how many people completed a sale on an e-commerce platform, what happens if your clients aren’t a digital shop or aren’t offering something which uses a checkout system?
What if your client uses a form for potential businesses to fill in and ask for a demo or a phone call and the business transaction occurs at the end of that process?
While the client knows their marketing campaign has been a success because they’ve signed up new customers or they’ve sold products, your digital agency isn’t able to include that in your feedback and future campaign plans unless the client informs you.
Why Is This Data Important?
If you’re spending money on an ad campaign, no matter what platform you’re using, then you need to know the money is being well spent and the marketing is having the desired effect – an increase in profits for your business.
If you can’t track conversions, it’s hard to justify the spend on a marketing campaign to your finance department. As a digital agency working for a client, you need to be able to allocate the budget they’ve given you for campaign marketing into Call to Actions which have given them results.
Being able to establish conversion tracking data helps to calculate Return on Investment and allows you to target Key Performance Indicators for your campaigns.
Why Should You Use It?
Using a tool like Google Analytics, GoogleAds or a Pay Per Click campaign, allows you to see which keywords, adverts, ad groups and campaigns are working most effectively at driving valuable customer activity to your website.
They allow you to understand your ROI and give you the information to make better informed decisions about your ad spend or campaign budget. But they can be complicated to set up and they often go wrong if just the slightest bit of data is wrong when creating your conversion actions. These can include, but are not limited to:
- Website actions
- Phone calls
- App or other resource downloads
- In-app actions (such as in-app purchases)
- Email signups
Google’s full conversion tracking capabilities can be found in their Support Database here: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722054
Why Is It So Hard To Track?
Conversion tracking requires code, usually JavaScript, to be placed on the website which existing clients and potential customers are being sent to.
The most common cause of problems is improperly implemented code, whether that be Google Analytics or any of the other tools available on the market. Without proper implementation, conversion tracking does not take place.
But finding out what’s gone wrong where isn’t a straightforward task. It can be laborious and frustrating.
This Is Where Beacon Can Help
We’re currently investigating different processes for handling conversion tracking data and are looking at a number of different ideas in our current testing phase.
However, one thing we’ve already identified is for websites to keep a handle on the user identifier for your website within the Beacon app. This will allow your system to identify a specific page load with an integration on your website – i.e. a sale or a download.
While the integration systems are still in the planning stage, we would urge sites using Beacon to save these identifiers as soon as possible. This can be done through saving via your client’s CRM or your own CRM as these records will provide the connection to the appropriate journey which Beacon has recorded.
On your Beacon tracked site we’re already monitoring forms. We have now implemented a tie that is able to provide your forms with a hidden value – bwai_page_load_id – which provides the connection reference. This can now be saved to your client or customer’s CRM record.
We’re continuing to investigate how we can add further secure and data compliant methods of connecting you or your client’s CRM to conversion tracking integrations and we’ll be updating the blog as and when anything new is released.
We have already established an eCommerce tracking system which you can read more about here: recording-ecommerce-events-in-beacon
Where Next?
Shockingly, according to Wordstream, less than half of small businesses have conversion tracking properly installed and are missing out on dozens, if not hundreds, of lost leads.
Make sure you’re getting as much information as you can from your marketing campaigns and ad spend by signing up for a free demo of Beacon.