4 Simple Steps to Measure Success
So you’re using third parties to help your business. Whether it’s to boost your sales or generate catalogue requests, what you most want from them is to drive traffic to your site – as this helps with everything.
But how can you tell which third party campaigns are working? Simple.
Use the Google campaign tracking URL builder.
What is Campaign Tracking?
A way of identifying how users get to your site – helping you see which third parties are good value for money.
The way it works is by adding tracking code to you existing URLs. For example, a third party, like Catalink.com, is linking to your site using your standard URL:
To measure whether Catalink as a web marketing source is working, you would supply them with this tracked url:
www.yourwebsite.com?utm_source=catalink&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=yourcampaign
The bits which come after your website address are your unique campaign tracking code.
Measuring your tracking results using Google Analytics
To get the most out of your tracking code and see which click-thrus actually convert, log in to your Google Analytics.
Go to Acquisitions > Campaigns
From here you can view how many visits you received from Catalink, how long visitors stayed on your website, how many pages they viewed and the bounce rate (those who saw one page and left).
How to measure campaign conversions
Towards the bottom right of this report you’ll see a ‘Conversions’ drop down box. Select which goal you’d like to measure.
ow you can see visits and goal conversions for each third party campaign in your list. You can quickly compare which marketing sources work best and identify those that don’t.
How do I use the Google Analytics URL builder?
- Go to the Google Analytics URL builder and enter the link you want to use to take visitors to your website. Eg www.yourwebsite.com
- Add the three main parameters you want to track:
- Campaign Source: Tells Google where the traffic is coming from: catalink
- Campaign Medium: Tells Google what kind of source it’s coming from: web
- Campaign Name: Simply describes the campaign: yourcampaign
- Click Submit to generate your unique tracking URL
- Now provide the third party, Catalink.com in this case, with the tracked URL
Sit back and enjoy your tracked results
Do this with each ‘campaign source’ and you’ll be able to see at a glance which third party campaigns are working – helping you save money and only use platforms which advance your goals.
Want to discover more about transparent campaigns? Contact us here.
