How to Use Analytics to Check If Your Ad is Working

Nearly 80% of businesses advertising online are dissatisfied with their conversion rate. It seems that advertisers are unaware of how their ad is performing in terms of getting customers to carry out an action or make a purchase. Analytics is a tool which can help online services to track traffic flow to their website and monitor the effectiveness of their digital marketing campaigns. Here’s how to make sure your Facebook and Google ads stand out from the crowd, by using analytics effectively to check what works and what doesn’t.

Use UTM

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) is a parameter from Google that you can add to a URL. This will record whenever a link is clicked on. Whether this is a Google, Facebook or Twitter ad, a link in an email newsletter or a hyperlink in a sponsored blog post, using a UTM will ensure you can see how often your links are being clicked on and if it is worth paying for the service again.

Once you have added a UTM to everything you want to track, you will have a good idea of which ads are working and which are not. Are people more likely to click through if there are more or less links in a blog post? This allows you to reinvest money where it is effective and stop spending money on ads which aren’t being clicked.

What About Conversion Rates?

Clicks are one thing, but are browsers being turned into buyers? You will need to develop the right marketing mix in order to create a strategy that encourages conversion of visitors into customers. However, first you need to know what your conversion rate is.

Once you have built your UTM tracking URL, login to Google Analytics and click ‘set a new goal’. For instance, you may want to track how many clickers of your link end up on the ‘order confirmation’ section of your ecommerce website. Once you’ve made this a goal, Google will track it and you can see your conversion rate. The average now stands 2.95%, but the top 10% best performing websites will hit conversion rates of over 13%.

Spending time providing a good product or service is one thing. Working on writing paid ad copy or commissioning sponsored blog posts is another. However, perhaps the most important part is the analytics as this allows you to see exactly what does and doesn’t work and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

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