Internet marketing is considered an effective way of marketing as many people move towards the use of the Internet to search for products, services and information. Marketers employ different strategies of Internet marketing to increase the returns of their campaigns. However, return on investment (ROI) for Internet marketing can prove to be quite strange to analyze because, for example, it can take quite some time before you start seeing traffic to the content you create today. The following are ways you can use to track the ROI of your Internet marketing campaigns.
PPC Tracking Codes
When using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing, you can easily set up a tracking mechanism that will enable you to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns. One best practice in PPC tracking is to set up a “Thank You” page where your consumers will be taken after making a purchase or doing the required action on your website. This confirmation page allows you to more accurately track PPC conversions. A piece of tracking code should be included in order to trigger conversions that will allow you to track the amount spent on ads and how well the method is performing.
Use Website Elements
Have you ever signed up for something where you were asked, “How did you find us?” That question is not there for any other reason but for purposes of tracking and evaluating the ROI of marketing campaigns. You too can use website elements such as mandatory fields on your lead forms or even shopping cart asking people how they found or heard of you. Keep the form simple but mandatory to encourage all your customers provide you with information that will help you determine the effectiveness of your Internet marketing strategies.
Using Analytics
As a webmaster, you must be having an analytics account that you can use to track the different types of marketing campaigns you are running. Google analytics has a URL generation and tagging option that any marketer can use to determine the ROI of the different Internet marketing campaigns they use. The important part is that you will need to use accurate metrics to measure your campaign ROI and not look at meaningless or plain data.
Setting up a tracking method in analytics is a step-by step process that you should follow carefully in order to be able to track not only AdWords campaigns but also Facebook ad campaigns, LinkedIn as well as Microsoft adCenter campaigns.
Daniel Ruyter is co-founder of the Internet marketing firm Alpha Tree Marketing. You can click here to learn more about online marketing for small businesses.
