Your website analytics can be used for far more than just tracking the performance of your search engine optimization efforts. Media buys these days almost always have a website address as one if not the only path for conversion. Think about how many television spots, radio reads, magazine ads, direct mail pieces, or billboards feature prominently a website address as the next step for an interested party to take. When the people making these media buys are not working with the ones tasked with tracking and analyzing your site’s traffic you are missing out on a bevy of useful performance data.
Many people have heard of or seen tracking URLs, addresses for a site with special codes attached to the end when clicking links between two online sources, such as site to site or email to site clicks. These tracking codes let you filter your web stats by specific sources or campaigns and learn about the regionality of respondents, their conversion rates, user behaviors and more. This technique can also be used for tracking the same information from offline sources by using a special domain and then redirecting people using it to your site with a tracking code applied. Instead of sending people in that direct mailing piece to MyCompany.com, send them to GreatDeal.com (which bounces them to Mycompany.com?ref=Mailing0107) and reap the benefits of merging traditional offline marketing with detailed site performance analytics! Our clients have been able to maximize and better understand their entire marketing efforts by utilizing this total team approach.
Tags: offline, marketing, media, buys, analytics, performace