When It Comes to Campaigns, Tag Everything

For a brand to be competitive, they need to know what works (and what doesn't). And while this may involve taking a risk on a campaign, that risk can be controlled through evaluating and measuring results.

Using Google Analytics, here are six steps to make sure you are taking full advantage of your campaigns.

 

1. Ensure Tracking Code Is Embedded on Every Page

It’s up to you how you do it, but Screaming Frog’ SEO Spider makes things easy as it crawls your pages and easily tells you which do not include analytic code.

2. Segment Campaign Profile

Create an individual campaign profile for pertinent webpages so you can separate your campaign traffic and conversions from direct (i.e. "Email Leadership E-Blast", "Paid Search Cupcake Ad", etc.)

3. Track Your Social Media Buttons

Using Google Analytics, create campaign tags for said webpages by customizing URLS so there is a tracking code embedded into the link. If you use a URL-shortening service it will even disguise the tag. If you don't, you'll see t.co or Facebook referrals in your analytics, but you won't know specific sources and your data won't be nearly as accurate.

4. Tag Email URLs

Just like your social media buttons, if you just include a generic URL to your email campaigns, your analytics are going to see referrals coming from everywhere (or worse lumped into direct traffic). Create a unique link that you can track success.

5. Omit Company IP Addresses

To ensure accuracy, make sure the people that are working on your campaign aren’t included in your traffic results.

6. Connect Paid Search Advertising

Google AdWords makes this easy. Make sure if you're using the company's budget you've got the ROI data to follow up.

At the end of the day, some of your results will always be credited to direct traffic due to dark or organic social or sharing. No worries, that's still a win for your website; the important part is do your best to know where your traffic is coming from and what they are doing for your website--both for current and future campaign success.