In this post we will go over the most important aspects of clearly defining the effectiveness of each acquisition channel.

Set Your Acquisition Goals

There are a number of Google Analytics reports you can set up to track the success of your acquisition channels. First, however, you need to define what success means to you.

For example, is the goal to raise brand awareness, or are you trying to drive targeted traffic that will convert into leads and sales? Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can set up tracking mechanisms in order to determine how effectively each acquisition channel is contributing to your overall digital strategy. Once you set up tracking for our media marketing efforts, Google Tags will automatically track the key actions visitors take on your website and attribute those conversions to the appropriate channel 

Multi-Channel Funnels

The multi-channel funnels report is one of the most valuable reports you can create if your website is tagged for tracking correctly.

It shows you the digital path that visitors take on your website on their journey towards an end conversion. For example, you will be able to track a visitor who clicks on, say, a link you’ve posted on Twitter, and the subsequent actions they took on your site – including any content downloaded or purchases made. In addition, it will also show ‘assisted conversions’. For instance, if someone clicked on one of your Facebook posts that promoted one of your products, disappeared, and then came back a few days later after searching for your site on Google, Google Analytics will attribute an assisted conversion to the Facebook post. This makes retargeting even more powerful and trackable

Network Referral Report

This report is a little simpler than the multi-channel funnels report, but still extremely valuable. It shows you exactly how much traffic is being driven by each acquisition channel. This helps put time into the ROI equation. If, for instance, you find that despite the five hours of work you put into social media marketing on LinkedIn each week, you’re still not generating much interest from the site, it might make sense for you to abandon your efforts on that platform and concentrate more on direct site strategy, which seems to be really working for you.

This report will also give you a detailed breakdown as to which of your URLs are being shared across each media platform – and again, you will be able to use this information to optimize your social media acquisition strategies accordingly.

Landing Pages

As you conduct your various digital strategies, you will, of course, be sharing posts that direct traffic directly to your landing pages, from where you hope visitors will take important actions such as downloading a piece of content or making a purchase.

The landing pages report will tell you which of your website’s pages are enjoying the most traffic, and, importantly, what acquisition channel that traffic is coming from.

If you’d like us to set up this tracking so you know exactly where your traffic is coming from request a no-cost digital strategy evaluation.