While word of mouth and networking may be instrumental to your business’ success in driving leads, we can all agree that a website is a critical piece to the puzzle. Digital mediums have the power to reach those in places and audiences you may never have access to traditionally. In addition, it’s a tool for inbound marketing, meaning the visitors are the ones doing all the work in their interest to find you. No door knocking involved.
With tactics like landing pages, offer incentives, and pop-ups for lead generation flooding the internet, how can we know what’s effective? What’s driving not only the most leads, but the most relevant leads that convert to customers?
A properly set up Google Analytics account contains a wealth of information about a buyer’s journey and how leads convert. Understanding what information to look for and what it all means can help you replicate success to generate even more leads. If you’re not yet familiar with Google Analytics, these tips can help you gain more control over lead generation.
Define a lead on your website
How do you collect lead information on your website? Before setting up any sort of conversion tracking in Google Analytics, define what kinds of leads drive revenue or results to your business. Collecting leads is about pinpointing the right audience that is interested and able to use your services or buy your goods.
Lead magnets depend on the industry and type of business. Life coaches, for example, may depend on webinar or email newsletter sign-ups to collect lead information to contact later. E-commerce sites may benefit from considering customers who abandon their carts before checkout as leads. Additionally, a simple contact form to express interest in a product or service is an obvious source to pull lead information.
To put it all together, a lead source can include:
- Webinar
- Email Newsletter
- E-Book or White Paper with restricted access
- Abandoned Cart
- Contact Forms
- Contests or Giveaways
- Other Incentivizing Magnets
Once you’ve pinpointed exactly where the lead contact information collection is taking place, you can accurately track these streams.
Set up conversion tracking
There are several ways to set up conversion tracking within Google Analytics, depending on where the magic happens. Having accurate tracking will ensure that you’re catching all conversions that you want to follow without having to cross-reference with a separate sales platform.
To get conversion tracking up, you must first create a new goal. You have the option to either select a template for common goals such as Make a Payment or Contact Us, or to create a custom configuration if your site’s structure isn’t compatible with the presets. After filling out the additional details and completing set up, test the trigger on your site to make sure it’s all working properly.
Determine what source is driving leads
Not all Analytics goals are created equal. A tracked goal isn’t necessarily a lead, so be certain to zero in on the specific goal name you want to explore before diving into reporting.
For a brief glance at your goal conversion Source, head into Conversions > Goals > Overview. This dashboard will give an overview of all the goals you’re tracking, broken down by the number of completions for each one. You can then explore what source is driving each of these for a particular time frame by exploring the Source/ Medium tab.
Alternatively, hop into Acquisition > Overview to see a breakdown of visitor sources and the accompanying Conversion information. You can view for a specific goal and analyze Goal Conversion Rate, Goal Completions, and Goal Value per each acquisition source for a specified date range.
Calculate ROI
This one requires some documentation and careful number crunching outside of Google Analytics. Calculate the amount you spend on each marketing service related to the acquisition sources: Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Paid Search, Email, and so on. These costs may be attributed to an in-house employee or an external agency. Doing so will help you understand the cost per lead for each source, and the cost per conversion.
Do more of what’s working for less
Once you have a clear view of what source and activities are driving the most profit and value, you’re ready to strategize a plan to generate even more leads. If leads are first pulled onto your site by blog content appearing in organic search, include more SEO content on popular topic. Perhaps your subscriber list for email campaigns announcing deals has a tremendous click-rate and engaged audience. This audience is ripe with opportunity! Try targeting the same list in social media paid advertising.
The sources with higher conversion rates and high ROI are the ones you want to focus on. Do more of what’s working for less, while decreasing the activities that pull leads at a high cost. Once you gather a thorough understanding of the inner workings of your Analytics account and website activities, you’re able to lead your business with more purpose to generate the leads you want.
Brett Farmiloe is the Founder & CEO of Markitors - a digital marketing agency that connects clients with customers… and had a good time doing it. When he’s not running his company, you can find Brett writing for publications like Forbes & Huffington Post or feeding his backyard chickens.
