We all want to maximize the effectiveness of our marketing efforts and generate the highest possible return. A critical step in doing so is properly measuring your initiatives’ results.
Luckily, measurement has become much easier and more accurate than ever before. This guide will explore multiple tools (most of which are free or available in a free trial) to improve your marketing measurement and channel attribution.
Google Analytics
Every website should measure basic information about their visitor traffic and on-site actions. Platforms like Google Analytics capture this data for free and can be easily installed on a site or app.
Analytics provides valuable information about site visitors including how they found your website, their location, and the content they view on-site. Measuring conversion actions such as phone calls or form submissions requires a few extra steps; however, this is crucial in crediting these leads back to their originating sources and better informing your marketing decisions.
Some specific elements to analyze:
- Engagement and conversion rates of each channel
- The “source / medium” dimension offers a breakdown of each channel type and specific source (such as a referring website’s domain or the specific social media platform)
- Comparative data for month-over-month (MoM) and year-over-year (YoY) trends
Check out our guide to website analytics.
Ad Platforms’ Reporting
Digital advertising platforms like Google and Meta include performance reporting directly in their dashboards to provide campaign metrics such as ad displays, ad clicks, and conversions. Most dashboards initially load a default performance table though additional insights are typically available from menu dropdowns and custom columns.
Though some conversion events like phone calls directly from an ad display can be tracked natively, integrate your website analytics with these ad platforms to import on-site goals to your campaign data and even use them for action-based bidding.
Some specific elements to analyze:
- Performance metrics among different channels and campaign scopes
- Cost per action such as average cost per ad click and per conversion
- Comparative data for month-over-month (MoM) and year-over-year (YoY) trends
Learn more about Google Ads and social media ads.
UTM Parameters
In combination with website analytics, adding a source-specific suffix to your landing page URLs (called a UTM parameter) is a free and effective way to understand what channels and campaign elements drive visitor traffic.
You can use a combination of static elements such as “utm_medium=paid-social” for setting a defined variable and dynamic elements such as “utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}” to populate the appropriate content automatically.
An example URL featuring UTM parameters:
yourwebpage.com?utm_medium=paid-social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}
Review Google Analytics-supported URL parameters.
Phone Call Tracking
Prospects’ phone calls can be more difficult to attribute to their respective marketing sources than digital-based goals. Call-tracking tools such as CallRail* have made call measurement easier and more accurate.
Within these platforms, businesses can create multiple phone numbers that can route to the same end number. Using each number exclusively for a certain channel intuitively credits phone calls to the campaign that brought them in. For example, calls from one set of numbers could only have originated from billboards while another set might be assigned to a direct mail campaign.
Heatmapping
Have you ever wished you could watch how a typical visitor interacts with your site? How far down the homepage *do* they actually scroll? Is the new carousel element you added getting the cursor attention you expected?
Heatmapping tools provide this capability. Tools like Hotjar* can be installed on your site to better understand user behavior and validate/dispel your hypotheses. Visitor engagement, including scroll depth, cursor movement, and element clicks, is captured and accessible via an intuitive dashboard.
Summary
Many options are available for measuring and analyzing the results of your marketing efforts. Specifically, the aforementioned platforms work most effectively when combined, not operating in isolation from one another. Leverage these and similar tools to optimize your marketing efforts, reallocate funds to top-performing initiatives, and improve your overall ROI.
