As customers engage with your
brand, there are many stepping stones along the customer’s path to purchase for
a marketer to track. Goals for each
brand will be different depending upon their business objective. While the overall macro conversion goal should
be aligned to the broader business objective, what are those other important
stones along the way on which we hope to see some footsteps? How do we know our buyers, prospects,
members, or community are engaging with our brand along a proven path that
leads to achieving that macro goal? Do we need to place a new stone down along
the path? This is the world of micro
conversions and where tracking events plays a key role.
In terms of your website, “Focus on
measuring your macro (overall) conversions, but for optimal awesomeness
identify and measure your micro conversions as well” (Kaushik, 2008). It might look something like this:
While page views do give the marketer insight into visitor
behavior, there are certain behaviors a website visitor may take on a page that
do not trigger a page view. This is
where measuring Events becomes an important aspect of web analytics. Google defines events as “user interactions
with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen
load. Downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded
elements, and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to track
as Events” (Google, 2015).
As
marketers, we all have come to the same realization, video is a critical and
impactful component of content marketing strategies. A Forbes Insights study of more than 300
C-level executives provides some compelling reasons for B2B marketers to use
video.
●
65% have visited a vendor’s website after watching a
video
●
53% have conducted a search to locate more
information
●
75% of executives indicated they watch work related
videos at least weekly (Forbes 2010).
“Video provides highly tailored feedback, enabling marketers
to learn what's engaging and what's not. If people are dropping off your
90-second video after 10 seconds, you'd want to know and adjust accordingly. If
80% stayed and watched to the end, you'd want to know that too” (Litt,
2013). This is all enabled by the use of
event tracking in web analytics tools.
If
part of your B2B marketing strategy involves using case studies and whitepapers
to influence and inform visitors, it will be important to understand which of
these pieces of content is downloaded more frequently. This is another micro conversion strategy
which can be evaluated through event tracking.
The advanced event tracking parameters enables deeper insights based on
filtering and segmenting reports in some web analytics tools (Feltman,
2014). Connecting content downloads to
referring sites might be an analysis to complete in order to evaluate PPC
campaigns.
Before you run out and begin
measuring every event on your website, think through which interactions are
most meaningful. “If a click does not
indicate a higher-than-average interest in your business, it is not going to
give you any insights into how your top visitors operate,” says Ashley Kemper
from Blue Fountain Media. (Blue Fountain Media, 2014). Here are 4 helpful Do’s for setting up event
tracking:
1.
Track meaningful interactions
2.
Categorize events intelligently - clearly define what
type of interaction is happening
3.
Track events with meaning - Write down the top
interactions a user can or should perform on the site.
4.
Use an event code configuration tool to simplify your
life (Blue Fountain Media, 2014)
Event tracking is a helpful way to
generate meaningful insights to shape and refine your buyer personas, show an
ROI for your content marketing budget, and uncover which micro conversions best
lead to macro conversions.
References:
Fettman, E. (2014, March). Google Analytics Universal Guide:
Best Practices for Implementing and Reporting. Retrieved from https://www.e-nor.com/publications/ebooks/google-analytics-universal-best-practices-for-implementation-and-reporting.pdf
Forbes. (2010). Video in the C-Suite: Executives embrace the
non-text web. Retrieved from
http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Video_in_the_CSuite.pdf
Google. (2015). Analytics help: About events. Retrieved from
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?hl=en
Kaushik, A. (2008, March 26). Excellent Analytics Tip #13: Measure Macro
AND Micro Conversions. Retrieved from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/
Blue Fountain Media. (2014, August 2014). How not to set up
event tracking. Ashley Kemper [Web log]. Retrieved from http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/how-not-to-set-up-event-tracking/
Litt, M. (2013, September 19). How Video Plays a Crucial Role in
the Rise of Content Marketing. Retrieved from http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/11651/how-video-plays-a-crucial-role-in-the-rise-of-content-marketing
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