Tracking “other” Marketing with Google Analytics

While this isn’t a brand spanking new technique, it’s one that often goes unexplored- and for relatively simple, measurable marketing it’s hard to beat.

Say, for instance you have a product to launch, or a requirement to increase market reach, promote an event, promote a brand, or even reinfuse a waning audience, the web provides a platform to do it. However, it might not be appropriate to pursue those activities using a solely web-based approach (integrated marketing communications 101).

There are ways and means of getting people to a site or page for a specific reason, such as to get sign-ups for product samples, or for an offline URL promotion for an address that’s easier to remember than your main corporate one- www.bestgadget.com vs. www.uber-corporation.com/great-gadgets/new-gadgets/gadgetX.asp.

So, whatever your reason for getting people to visit that nice neat URL, chances are you’ll be wanting them to get to the right page on your site with as little fuss as possible. You can do this with a 301 redirection or a meta-refresh, but you can’t track it- meaning that it’s not measurable. But, if you use a meta-refresh, AND apply the right query string Google will allow you track visits for these campaigns. Like I said, it’s not new, but it’s often over-looked.

In this example a company has mobile signage on delivery vans promoting their new best gadget with the www.bestgadget.com URL. They could also be using direct mail with a call to action that promotes the same URL. Here’s the process for setting this up:

1) Create a properly formatted URL that Google can track e.g. if you want visitors to go to www.bestgadget.com, and then get redirected to www.uber-corporation.com/great-gadgets/new-gadgets/gadgetX.asp you should use a Google Analytics URL Builder to create that trackable URL e.g.
http://www.bestgadget.com/?utm_source=BestGadgetURL&utm_medium=
SignageAndFlyer&utm_campaign=GadgetX

…where you have specified these values:
Campaign Source (utm_source): BestGadgetURL
Campaign Medium (utm_medium): SignageAndFlyer
Campaign Name (utm_campaign): GadgetX

2) Insert that trackable URL into some meta-refresh mark-up in a notepad and save as e.g. index.txt

3) Test that mark-up by changing the .txt extension to .htm or .html and then opening it in a browser. If all goes well you will see the refresh working and the long, tagged URL in the address bar when you arrive at the page.

4) Place that meta-refresh mark-up on the homepage/index page of the domain/URL that you’re promoting for the campaign e.g. www.bestgadget.com

5) Ensure that there are no redirections in place, otherwise they’ll override the meta-refresh.

6) Go to your Google Analytics for the main site e.g. www.uber-corporation.com, and look in the “Campaigns” section (NOT AdWords). If you have had visits from www.bestgadget.com you should see that data in a campaign named “GadgetX”- Google will do all the collating for you, based on the trackable URL you’ve created.

This can also apply to banner advertising, email campaigns, and probably much much more.

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4. Web Analytics – New Yahoo Analytics and Google Analytics update
5. Moving Web Content in a Server Side Technology Independant Way
6. Tracking clicks from smart phones
7. Why Goals are important in Google Analytics
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This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.