How To Find Which Digital Marketing Channels Generate Leads for Your Biz

When you’re analyzing what works and doesn’t work in the field of marketing, tracking is key. 

The awesome news being, tracking your digital marketing dollars and spend for leads/conversions is SUPER easy, and takes less than 10 minutes to set up. 

Google Analytics Base Code Set-Up

If you don’t already have Google Analytics set up on your website, do that now. Like right now. It’s free. 

And if you don’t know how, share this post on setting up Google Analytics with your Web Developer and have them do it for you. 

Google Analytics will require you to place a small snippet of code on all pages of your website. In exchange for that, they will offer you amazing reports. 

Here are some examples of the data you can get from Google Anayltics reports. 

• How much traffic your website had last month, compared to this month. 
  • Why? Knowing your baseline traffic numbers can help you know if the newest digital marketing campaign is working, and if so (it’s driving traffic), is the traffic converting? 
• Top landing pages (which website pages did people land on the most)? 
  • Why? Which pages are your audiences’ favorites? Which pages address their pain points? Things they are searching for? By knowing this, you can create more content tailored to their interests, monetize your top performing pages, and increase your leads database. 
• Average length of time on your website 
  • Why? A small amount of time + a high bounce rate means that your website is not engaging – people don’t like it. But don’t worry, there are things you can do to update and change it for the better!
• Goal Reports
  • Which pages are driving traffic that actually converts (becomes a lead)? 
  • Which online sources (Facebook, Google, Instagram, etc.) are driving the most conversions? 
  • Why? Knowing where your conversion based traffic is coming from will help you to know where to spend your money. For example, you don’t want to spend all your money on Instagram Ads, if most of your conversions come from Google.

Adding Google Search Console To Your Reporting Data

Next, you’ll want to add Google Search Console to your arsenal of data pulls. 

Why?

Google Analytics gives GREAT info – but they have a seperate tool for tracking what terms people are searching to find your business – Google Search Consolue. 

True, you’ll get some data from Google Analytics on this, but for more in-depth data (that you can use to adjust your digital marketing plan monthly), you’ll want to have access to this free data source as well. 

Have your web developer set this up for you or follow the directions to set up Google Search Console here. 

Using Google Goals – Know Where Your Money Is Going

In under 10 minutes, you should have your base tracking installed and already set-up Google Search Console.

Or, if you’re really smart, you just emailed this article over to your web developer and said, “Hey, set this up for me.” (If you don’t have someone to do this for you, I can help. Let’s chat.)

The next piece is sorting the traffic. 

You want to be able to know which channels are delivering quality traffic (ie converters vs. non-converters, or even 1st visit converters vs. 3rd visit converters) as opposed to non-converting traffic.

You may be spending a lot of time and energy creating content for social media, when only 2% of your 1st website visit conversions (meaning people who become a lead their first time on your website).

That time and money could be spent on creating more content for your website (blog posts/videos/etc.) to help you index on searches for more Keywords (direct converting traffic – people are already searching for your solution). 

How They Work: Google Destination Goals

Destination goals are some of the simplest to set up in Google Analyitics. A destination goal triggers when an event occurs on your website. 

For example:

Someone submits a “Contact Me” form on your website, the Destination Goal would count that person as a “Converter” (or “Lead”) for the Goal: Contact Me forms submitted. 

Even better example: 

You have a targeted lead generation offer that leads people to an email list. 

Potential clients go to your website.

They see an offer for a “Free Home Analyis Report – Find Out How Much You Can Sell Your Home For Right Now”.

They input their contact info and click “submit”.

They hit a yourwebsitehere.com/thank-you page (you’re web developer can create this basic page for you) after they submit their info (the “destination” that Google refers to as a “Destination Goal” – the goal is to get them to the /thank-you page and get you a lead!).

The Destination Goal: “Converters: Home Sellers Lead” would be triggered.

You would see 1 new lead (Home Sellers) on your Google Analytics report.

You would be able to see how many of those types of leads came from Google Searches (Qty: 15) versus Facebook referrals (Qty: 4). 

Set it Up: Google Destination Goals

Sign into Google Analytics.

Open your website property.

Go to the Admin Menu. 

Navigate to Goals.

Click “New Goal”. 

Click “Custom” under Goal Setup, then “Continue” to set up Destination Goal. 

Select Event type: “Destination” and click “Continue”.

Type in your tracking URLs. 

Establish a lead value (if you know).

PRO-TIP: If you don’t know your numbers, don’t put random numbers in here. Don’t say “I think a lead is worth about $5 to me.” Just leave the switch toggled to “OFF”. It will still work, without messing up your data later.

Turn Funnel tracking “ON”.

List the URLs for your Funnel Steps, if you know. See screenshot.

If you don’t know how people primarily get to your “thank-you” page, you can leave the “Required?” button toggled to “OFF” for now. 

Verify your goal. Your hyperlink will say “Verify your goal”. 

SAVE.

You did it! 

A Few Of My Favorite Google Reports

You’ll start to see results within days, but allow 30-60 days for a good chunk of data to help you make data-driving marketing decisions.

Here are a few of my favorite reports. 

Goal Conversions Source By Month

This client gets most of their best leads from direct searches, Google, so we spend more time creating content and optimizing for that space.

Acquisition -> Search Console -> Landing Pages

Where is our traffic coming from? What pages do they hit first? Which pages drive the most traffic? Which pages can I optimize to get more traffic? 

My team recently completed an SEO audit for this client.

We made a few changes to optimize the website for Google/Bing (SERP and SEO fixes and updates) and rewrote the landing page website copy for this client (URLs redacted for client privacy).

Data-Driven Real Estate Marketing Agency

If you’re looking for help growing your leads pipeline, or increasing conversions, I’d love to chat. 

Actual Client Results Page.

Leads Doubled over 100%.

No pressure, but a quick call let’s me know what you’re doing now, what needs to be improved, and let’s us both know if we might like to work together. 

To book your free call, visit my website MissionMarketing.Today.