A lot of business owners skip conversion tracking, assuming their inbox is enough, but without those numbers in your analytics, you can’t really see which marketing efforts are paying off. In this episode, we’ll walk through simple ways to set up tracking so you can make smarter decisions about where to spend your time and energy.
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I use Streamyard for lives that I wanna do and sometimes for my podcast guesting because it has extra elements that I can put on the video while I’m doing it. So mostly the lives, but I can put banners down at the bottom. I can also share my screen and have somebody else come with me on the entire video. I can have snippets of like things to pop up in advance and ready to show on the screen. So for me, it’s mostly for lives , but it can also be used for like workshop type presentations. - Recommended Podcast 👉 Self-Discipline is Easy, Actually by Dan Koe.
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Something I see often that’s missing from client’s analytics is conversion tracking. The act of being able to see if a form was submitted.
Now you might ask, um, Barb, why do I need to track that if I can see the inquiries coming into my inbox? I might answer, because having that number inside analytics allows you to track your marketing efforts.
If most of your leads are coming from Instagram but most of your sales come from organic search, you may want to focus more of your marketing efforts on organic search.
Let’s cover some common scenarios for setting this in place.
A very common scenario is a website has a form and that form submits an email into an inbox and then a business owner responds to the email. A call is had. A sale is made. With no idea of how they came into the website.
Sure, you can ask them. And that’s not entirely reliable. Mostly, people will respond how they last saw a business. Not how they were originally found.
Your inbox isn’t a credible source of information.
You might see ten new inquiries this month, but which ones came from Google? Which came from your newsletter? Which came from AI Search?
Without proper tracking, you’re guessing and this leads to wasted time and effort.
When you start tracking conversions, you get to see it all:
- What page or post brought them to your site
- What action they took before submitting a form
- And how that connects back to your sales
So, let’s talk about a few simple ways to start tracking conversions.
1. Add a thank-you page
This is the page that someone lands on after they submit a form or do a download or sign up for your newsletter. Sometimes, forms default to a generic success message that appears on the same page. The page reloads upon itself where the URL does not change and it says, thank you for doing whatever. If you can send them to a thank you page, a different page after they submit the form, it has a different URL. Usually I start it with thank-you-contact or newsletter or whatever.
The thank you page is my favorite way to track conversions. It’s simple and easier to see in reporting.
2. Use UTM links
When you share a blog post or lead magnet on social or in an email, add UTM tags (It look like this: ?utm_source=GoogleListing&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=homepage). It lets analytics know where that click came from, whether that’s Instagram, newsletter, Google business listing, etc.
3. Turn on enhanced conversions
In Google Analytics, there’s a setting called “Enhanced Measurement” inside the data stream. Flip it on and it’ll automatically track things like form interactions, downloads, and clicks.
4. Track phone call clicks
If people call from your site, set up tracking for phone link clicks or use a dedicated call-tracking number. (See #6)
5. Connect your CRM or form tool
Some tools send form submission data to an analytics page automatically, sometimes directly to your Google Analytics, saving you from having to set it up yourself.
6. Use Tag Manager to track GA4 events
Sometime none of the above are available or maybe don’t work depending on your tech stack. Tag Manager is a no code way to log button clicks and other behaviors on the website into Google Analytics. This is the tactic that helps track the phone call clicks from the website.
The Takeaway
If you aren’t tracking how people take the step you want them to take, you risk spending time on the wrong marketing tasks and your business becomes stagnant. Ew. We don’t want that!
If you’d rather someone else handle the analytics stuff, my Analytics Clarity Pakcage can help. It’s designed to review your setup and provide a dashboard so you can see everything.
Next Up
Feeling inspired to take a small next step? Head to episode 11, 7 SEO Metrics to Watch. May favorite numbers to watch when it comes to knowing whether or not your SEO is working.
