  Tracking offline marketing efforts that bring traffic to your website
June 24, 2010 at 1:10 pm
 Have you ever been to a conference where various businesses purchase booth space to promote their respective businesses? On or around the booth you will notice several things :
-company logo front and center
-company product (if applicable)
-company paraphernalia (keychains, mugs, lanyards, etc.)
-a happy employee who is eager to greet you
This post will discuss how we can leverage Google Analytics and the Newfangled tracking system to help show that the marketing dollars spent on the paraphernalia was well-spent. Once you know how to track the above, you can learn how to track your tweets, links in blog comments and just about anything you can think of that brings traffic into your website.
How do we begin collecting that data?
Before we can tell our boss how awesome of a job we did, we will need to prepare the material that will be showcased at the booth.
Step 1 : Create the paraphernalia and make sure they each have unique URLs. (make sure that these URLs are not actual pages on your website unless the content on those pages will be useful to the end user)
- For the keychain, the URL could be : http://www.yourcompanyname.com/keychain
- For the mug, the URL could be : http://www.yourcompanyname.com/mug
- For the lanyard, the URL could be : http://www.yourcompanyname.com/lanyard
Also, give users incentive to type in that exact URL stated on the piece of paraphernalia. i.e. go to the exact URL for our free webinar!
Step 2 : Now that you have reserved the URLs /keychain, /mug and /lanyard create the trackers within the Newfangled CMS.
In the Newfangled content management system, we have this beautiful tool called the "Newfangled Tracker". (original name!)
- The Title of the tracker : Conference_May_2010_Keychain
- The Alias : keychain
- Alias Destination Link : /free_webinar (this can be whatever link you would like, just make sure that it exists as an actual page on your site))
- Notify E-mail : your@emailaddress.com (this e-mail gets a notification e-mail anytime a session hits the tracker
So, what exactly happens now? A person picks up your keychain from your booth. They are now interested about the free webinar that they can download and type in the URL http://www.yourcompanyname.com/keychain. The user will be automatically redirected to the Alias destination link. (in this case, it will be to the URL of the free webinar that they can download)
Now, the Newfangled CMS will log that tracker as being hit from a visitor. The CMS will now know exactly what pages this user has viewed as well as how long they have viewed each page for. On top of that, if that user submits a form with their e-mail address anywhere on the site (Newsletter subscription, Contact Us form, Webinar Download form) the Newfangled CMS intelligently replaces the unique ID number with that individuals e-mail. Therefore, next month - you can revisit the tracker and see an individual who came in through that dinky keychain that ended up filling out a contact form that turned into a $70,000 project. Talk about ROI!
(the Newfangled tracker will lose sight of the user only if the user switches computers or clears their cookies)
Most people would then say, that is pretty awesome - now you can check the performance in Google Analytics of the page /keychain. Unfortunately, that is incorrect. /keychain is simply a 301 redirect that does not send any data to Google Analytics. It will take another step to ensure that you are having vision into the success of the keychain within Google Analytics.
Step 3 : Set up Google URL Campaign Builder to pull data into Google Analytics.
Visit the following URL (not now! read on)
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
You should see the following fields for you to fill out :
Website URL : In the case of using Google URL campaign builder in conjunction with the Newfangled tracker, just use your website URL.
What should you fill out for Campaign Source, Medium, Term, Content and Name?
Source is the overall description of the type of traffic. In this case the Source is : Conferences
Medium in this case can be something along the lines of : May_2010
Campaign Term is not applicable in this case.
Campaign Content can be used but definitely not necessary in this case.
Campaign Name is important to use. The Campaign Name should be : Keychain
When you are done writing the fields, click on the button to generate the URL.
Please note that you'll need to create three different tagged URLs for each piece of paraphernalia.
You should end up with a list as follows :
http://www.yourcompanyname.com/?utm_source=conference&utm_medium=may_2010&utm_campaign=keychain
http://www.yourcompanyname.com/?utm_source=conference&utm_medium=may_2010&utm_campaign=mug
http://www.yourcompanyname.com/?utm_source=conference&utm_medium=may_2010&utm_campaign=lanyard
Step 4 : Edit the Newfangled trackers you have set up for the keychain, mug, lanyard.
So, instead of the following :
- The Title of the tracker : Conference_May_2010_Keychain
- The Alias : keychain
- Alias Destination Link : /free_webinar
- Notify E-mail : your@emailaddress.com
change it to
- The Title of the tracker : Conference_May_2010_Keychain
- The Alias : keychain
- Alias Destination Link : /free_webinar?utm_source=conference&utm_medium=may_2010&utm_campaign=keychain
- Notify E-mail : your@emailaddress.com
Step 5 : Sit back and collect data!
So, what will you see after the data has been collected?
Within the Newfangled tracking system, you will be able to see how many people came from the website segmented by what piece of paraphernalia they used to type in the URL. You will also be able to see when they make a conversion on your site as long as they do not switch machines or clear cookies.
Within Google Analytics, you will be able to see how well your conferences perform as a whole. Or, how well the conference in May went. Or even, how the individual pieces of paraphernalia did in terms of bringing in quality traffic.
Use your creativity to measure things you never thought could be measured
Since this is a post that needs you to conceptualize how this is applicable to you, please use the comments section to discuss how you would use the Newfangled tracking system or Google Campaign URL builder. Also, feel free to ask any questions in the comments field as well.
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This post was so interesting! It's crazy how much you can track using Google Analytics...I never would have thought to use it to track offline campaigns.
Offline marketing is very hard to track compared to online marketing. With the use of the right tools, results from online marketing can be track easily. However, it's far different from offline marketing.