{"id":695,"date":"2016-04-01T07:13:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T07:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/?p=695"},"modified":"2016-06-21T19:35:55","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T19:35:55","slug":"if-you-read-one-article-about-tracking-read-this-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/01\/if-you-read-one-article-about-tracking-read-this-one\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Read One Article About Tracking Read This One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-732\" src=\"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Total-Clicks.jpg\" alt=\"if you read one article about tracking read this one\" width=\"750\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Total-Clicks.jpg 750w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Total-Clicks-300x220.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/>What do think is one of the biggest nemesis Marketers have in their business? You guest it&#8230; &#8221; <em>Tracking<\/em>.&#8221; Just think about it for a minute, without tracking how can you tell what&#8217;s really working? What&#8217;s costing you money? Or better yet, when to scale a campaign?<\/p>\n<p>I have to admit, I didn&#8217;t start seeing a positive ROI in my business until I started tracking all my campaigns. It is absolutely amazing what you can track with the right platform. For example, ever wondered which of your keywords were capturing opt-ins on a CPA offer? Did you even know you could track the actions of your leads as they pass through your sales funnel?<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">By The Numbers<\/h3>\n<p>Fact, some of the most successful Marketers built assets for their business by purchasing <a href=\"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/06\/warning-youre-losing-money-by-not-using-solo-ads\/\">solo ads<\/a>. Fact #2, you can not purchase solo ads&#8230; or even sale solo ads without some kind of tracking system capable of distinguishing clicks. As a solo ad buyer you only get charged for unique clicks.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s imperative to know from the 300 clicks ordered how many of them were unique. I once had to contact a solo ad provider to let him know I was owed 40 unique clicks. In short, based on the total clicks I received&#8230; it appeared that my order was complete; however my tracking system told me otherwise, and thus I was awarded 40+ unique clicks from my provider. Honestly, without <a href=\"http:\/\/clickmagick.com\/go\/deejaaymark\">ClickMagick<\/a> there was really no other way for me to catch that.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/clickmagick.com\/go\/deejaaymark\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-703\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-703\" src=\"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Start-Your-14-Day-Trial-With-ClickMagick-3.png\" alt=\"Start Your 14-Day Trial With ClickMagick (3)\" width=\"760\" height=\"100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Start-Your-14-Day-Trial-With-ClickMagick-3.png 760w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Start-Your-14-Day-Trial-With-ClickMagick-3-300x39.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">How It Works<\/h3>\n<p>Before we begin let me be candid here, it would be absolutely ludicrous to start a paid ad campaign without any kind of tracking in place. As I eluded to earlier in the article, part of having a success campaign is the ability to scale. Without knowing which keywords are generating clicks, leads, and sales there&#8217;s no way to effectively scale a campaign without losing money.<\/p>\n<p>Once you create a landing page\u00a0around an offer, you&#8217;ll want to create a basic tracking URL as your destination link.\u00a0When you create your tracking URL, make sure to include a <b>Link Name\u00a0<\/b>(though it is optional, it will help to identify your campaigns), name your <strong>Tracking Link\u00a0<\/strong>(this will become your Tracking URL to promote your landing page) and a <strong>Primary URL\u00a0<\/strong>(this is your landing page where you&#8217;re sending traffic).\u00a0Cloaking a Link is an optional feature not required for creating a tracking link.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-719\" src=\"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-12.44.57-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 12.44.57 PM\" width=\"820\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-12.44.57-PM.png 820w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-12.44.57-PM-300x118.png 300w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-12.44.57-PM-768x302.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the important part. Once you create your landing page and your tracking URL, you&#8217;ll need to actually use your tracking URL in your campaign.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re running an <strong>email marketing campaign <\/strong>, you&#8217;ll want to use your new tracking URL in your links, behind your calls-to-action.<\/p>\n<p>If you have a call-to-action in your email like, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinemarketingtoolz.com\/FBRemarketingMastery\/\">Download My Free FB Retargeting Ebook<\/a>,&#8221; you&#8217;ll want to make sure you use your tracking URL as your hyperlink.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re running a <strong>PPC campaign <\/strong>, you&#8217;ll want to make sure to use your tracking URL in the &#8221; <strong>Destination URL <\/strong>&#8221; (see the example from Google AdWords below).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn2.hubspot.net\/hub\/53\/file-23114146-png\/blog\/images\/adwords-tracking-url.png?t=1459450815016\" alt=\"adwords tracking url\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Checking Your Analytics<\/h3>\n<p>Now here&#8217;s the best part&#8230; now that you&#8217;ve done the hard work of creating a Landing page<b>\u00a0<\/b>and a Tracking URL for that landing page, you can check the analytics from your tracking platform for visits from that specific URL. In the example below you will find analytics from a solo ad I purchased for 100 clicks:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-723\" src=\"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-1.46.16-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 1.46.16 PM\" width=\"911\" height=\"83\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-1.46.16-PM.png 911w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-1.46.16-PM-300x27.png 300w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-1.46.16-PM-768x70.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 911px) 100vw, 911px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Total Clicks &#8211; 151<\/p>\n<p>Unique Clicks &#8211; 149<\/p>\n<p>Filtered Clicks &#8211; 19<\/p>\n<p>Actions (Opt-ins) &#8211; 59<\/p>\n<p>Average Clickthrough Rate &#8211; 39.6%<\/p>\n<p>With Clickmagick you can also go a step a further and analyze the quality of clicks (e.g., tier 1, tier 2, tier 3) and mobile clicks:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-725\" src=\"http:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-2.05.30-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 2.05.30 PM\" width=\"915\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-2.05.30-PM.png 915w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-2.05.30-PM-300x120.png 300w, https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-31-at-2.05.30-PM-768x308.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 915px) 100vw, 915px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>That&#8217;s pretty much the basics of tracking URL&#8217;s; however as you can see there is so much more you can do (depending on your tracking platform). The point is&#8230; it doesn&#8217;t matter what system you use but you need tracking in your business &#8211; without it you have no direction.<\/p>\n<p>I used Clickmagick in my examples simply because it&#8217;s the current tracking system I use in my business, and as you can see it&#8217;s a very comprehensive tracking system that has worked really well for my business. You can get more information on ClickMagick by <a href=\"http:\/\/clickmagick.com\/go\/deejaaymark\">clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who are already tracking URL&#8217;s tell us about your experience by commenting below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do think is one of the biggest nemesis Marketers have in their business? You guest it&#8230; &#8221; Tracking.&#8221; Just think about it for a minute, without tracking how can you tell what&#8217;s really working? What&#8217;s costing you money? Or better yet, when to scale a campaign? I have to admit, I didn&#8217;t start seeing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tools-and-resources"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mark-buchanan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}