Measuring Lead Generation with Google Analytics to Improve ROI

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Measuring Lead

Generation with

Google Analytics

to Improve ROI

A marketing executive’s guide to Google

Analytics and campaign metrics.

Paul Mosenson

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Introduction to

Measurement

Setting the stage to monitoring lead generation via marketing

channels

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Welcome to Lead Generation Analytics

Thanks for downloading our latest ebook. You are probably one of many who have a somewhat clear understanding of all that Google Analytics (or GA) has to offer, but maybe you don’t really understand all of the opportunities you have to analyze the results of lead generation programs with the free tool.

So the focus of this ebook is lead generation measurement via marketing campaigns pure and simple. With GA you can do so much more with it (i.e. website page analysis, set up retargeting, visitor demographics) but again, the focus here is website traffic and conversions. Your goal is to make better, more efficient, marketing decisions (channels, tactics, spend, offers) that increase your ROI. This ebook will help shed some light on how to make those decisions.

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The Cycle of Lead Generation

Measurement

Improvement Action Measure Analyze Insight NuSpark Marketing, 2016

Analytics must constantly be reviewed before, during, and post campaigns in

order to optimize current and make better marketing decisions for future

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The Lead Management Ecosystem

Inquiries enter the funnel, and are nurtured into leads until handed off to sales. Measuring the marketing pipeline is the focus of the ebook, with an emphasis on Google Analytics as a

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Lead Generation Objectives

According to the survey from

eMarketer, improving lead quality is far and away the number one

objective, followed by increasing sales revenue and number of total leads.

Companies need to consistently

assess and optimize their strategies in order to achieve these goals, and that means careful analysis of data, including what Google Analytics tells you.

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Planning to Measure

A lead generation measurement program should be carefully laid out with goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each campaign. It should answer what you’ll be measuring, when, and how. Goal examples:

• Quantity of inquiries, and cost-per-inquiry.

• Quality of leads, which denotes MQLs or marketing qualified leads, and a cost-per-MQL.

• Increase in annual marketing ROI.

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Defining Analytics Data

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Introducing the Inquiry

An inquiry is purely that- a prospect who has taken such an interest in a

content or offer that he has agreed to offer an email address in exchange for the content. Inquiry insights:

• For a content inquiry, he has carefully determined that your content was

valuable, knowing that although he may not be ready to buy, there is some company problem that your content may help solve, and he is prepared to receive follow-up nurture emails and or qualification calls.

• For a bottom-funnel inquiry; a request for a quote, consultation, assessment, trial

or demo, this inquiry is more valuable and should be followed-up with within a timely manner.

• Measuring inquiries is the foundation of all lead generation programs at the

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The Marketing Qualified Lead

MQLs began as inquiries, but through a mix of continued content

engagement, audience demographic segmenting, and other qualifications defined by marketing and sales together (timing, budget, industry), these leads are sent to inside sales by marketing. Some MQL insights:

• Inquiries need to be convinced to engage with sales. They begin as researchers,

but if your content is relevant and problem-solving, these inquiries will click and read more frequently, and return to your website. The concept of lead scoring, or assigning values to prospects based on who they are and what they do is

typically what transforms an inquiry or top-funnel lead to become an MQL.

• With the use of marketing automation linked with CRMs, there is capability of

measuring “cost-per-qualified” lead which is the better metric to measure performance if you are able. Otherwise you should have an “inquiry to MQL” conversion rate prepared for planned analysis.

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Website versus Landing Page Goals

Your website

• Traffic typically comes from organic

search or referral sites; and less from advertising. (SEO is in play here)

• The goal of website traffic is to engage a

prospect to dig deep and learn about a solution.

• Top funnel lead generation comes into

play with compelling content offers or newsletters.

• Bottom funnel leads are generated via

A landing page

• Landing pages are designed purely for lead (or inquiry) capture.

• Traffic comes purely from

advertising, email, or paid search • Offers can be a mix of top and

bottom funnel themes, but need to be planned accordingly in your

offer plan.

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What is a Session

• A session is simply a visit to your website that encompasses a one or a mix of page views,

interactions or transactions.

• If a prospect visits your site 10x in one day, that is recorded as 10 sessions. Thus sessions take into account users who visit the site more than once.

• A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, at midnight, or if the

prospect returns via a unique marketing campaign.

NuSpark Marketing, 2016

Next we review key metrics in Google Analytics, as a foundation to lead generation

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% New Sessions

• New sessions are the

percentage of all sessions during a predetermined time frame.

• New sessions are always good as you are attracting new

prospects to your site. • A growing percentage of

returning users are even better, as returning users denote prospects are

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What is a New User and What are these

Cookies?

• A new user is defined as the first

time a device (PC, mobile phone, etc.) or browser loads your website; Google Analytics then creates a unique ID called a client ID and sends it to their servers.

• These users are delivered cookies,

and thus are identified as a unique person. Cookies are small pieces of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s browser. Users are not necessarily new to your site, but new during the time frame being

analyzed. Cookies track every data point reported on GA.

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Clicks versus Sessions (for Advertising)

• Clicks are how many times an ad or promoted link was clicked by a user, which is different from a session.

• A new user may click an ad multiple times in the same

session. So if a user clicks an ad 3x within 30 minutes, ad reports will show three clicks, but Google Analytics shows one session.

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Bounce Rate

• A bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that visit one page during the session,

then exiting.

• If your bounce rate is over 40% (our goal is under 40%), then many of your visitors are

leaving after just visiting one page, and that’s cause for concern. However blogs are usually one page long and can affect site bounce rate. It’s best to create a filter, whereby blog visitors are not counted. This is implemented by creating a custom audience segment within Google Analytics (more on this later).

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Two other engagement metrics

• Pages Per Session and Average Session Duration: These two metrics measure

how engaging your website is to prospects. Pages per session may be less important nowadays depending on site design, as many Wordpress themes

focus more on the scroll than the link-click. Additionally a mobile site is typically less engaging than a desktop site.

• It may be best to look at site engagement with Google Analytic’s built-in

audience segments. Below shows example segments bounce visits and

non-converters. Looking at these segments alongside general Google Analytic

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Campaign Tracking

Tagging URLs

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What is Campaign Tagging

• Campaign tagging allows you to add special tracking code to your destination

URL (where prospects go to after clicking ads or links), aka a tagged URL, to identify in more detail the source of your website or landing page traffic.

• When a visitor comes to a site that has the Google Analytics tracking code

installed, Google Analytics captures a lot of data via cookies: the medium (organic, referral, direct, etc.), source (site the visitor came from), browser,

screen resolution, country, metro, etc. With campaign tagging you can overwrite the cookie data with your own custom tags for more granular campaign

tracking.

• Without campaign tagging, you have to rely on Google default definitions of

traffic, which often is not enough data to make marketing decisions on.

• By default, Google AdWords and Google Display Network URLs in ads are

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Why Campaign Tagging

• Consolidates all marketing campaigns in Google Analytics

• Traffic from 3rd party sites from advertising or social media show as referrals by default on Google Analytics. Tagging URLs identify more specifically.

• Email clicks by default show as direct traffic on Google Analytics. Tagging URLs in email campaigns allow you to track email clicks, by campaign or by message, for more granular email marketing analysis.

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Google’s URL Builder Form

Google’s easy-to-use form for tagging website or landing page URLs.

• Campaign Source: The specific source of a visit to your site or landing page

• Campaign Medium: The type of media

campaign (search, display, retargeting, email, social-ads)

• Campaign Content: Offer or ad name

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Campaign Tag Strategy

At NuSpark we use spreadsheets to list our campaign variables and create tagged URLs. As you see below, there are a number of mediums and sources we can use to track lead generation campaigns. Mediums are grouped categories of sources. We use the content variable to organize the content or offer type. The

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Implementing Campaign Tags

•

http://www.nusparkmarketing.com/?utm_campaign=ROI-white- paper&utm_medium=Publisher-display&utm_source=Tech-Target&utm_content=Content&utm_term

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Measuring Offline and Direct Mail

• You can measure offline media, like print publications and direct mail, by doing the following:

• Create a “vanity” URL that is unique to the campaign source (i.e.

nusparkmarketing.com/download).

• Create a campaign tag for Google Analytics, per previous slide, and use as

Medium: “Offline” and as Source: “Directmail” or “TradePubName.”

• Have your IT contact prepare a 301 redirect from the vanity URL to the actual

URL that includes the campaign tag. Now we can track traffic from these offline media sources.

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Goals: Conversions and

Events

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Lead Generation Mechanisms

You should have some form of content/offer lead generation

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Conversion Goal Strategy

Conversion goals need to correspond to your business objectives and contribute to your marketing efforts.

For lead generation websites, any opportunity to capture an email address (or phone call) in exchange for something of value to a prospect is a conversion,

whether that prospect is ready to buy now or later. However that name has shown an interest in solving a business problem, and that’s where your content nurture begins.

As you’ll see, not all lead conversions have equal weight. As a business, it’s up to you (with our help if needed) to determine how to route a lead. A transactional conversion, meaning a quote request or a free consultation, can bypass the nurture process as that audience is already a qualified lead and thus have the highest value. Your top-funnel content conversions require nurture, so the value of these engagement conversions will be less, but still a valuable component to

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Conversion Tactics

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Destination Goals

• Destinations are specific URLs that represent a page that follows a form submission on a website or landing page; meaning a lead conversion has been confirmed.

• It’s best to have unique URLs for each conversion type for tracking.

• Thank you pages offer the opportunity for upsell/cross-sell, blog subscriptions, social media follow invitations, or even another offer. In summary, it’s an opportunity to further engage prospects.

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Other Goal Conversions

• Other conversions to consider are an e-newsletter sign-up, or even a blog subscription. These two goals support the quality of your content and will bring people back to your site via email promotion, social, and other channels if your content is relevant.

• You can set up unique Thank You pages for these activities; a

redirect after a form submission, or as an event conversion.

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Tracking Website Events

Events are website activities that do not involve a click to another website page.

Event tracking is not a lead

generation measure directly when it comes to forms, but offers other engagement analysis, and can be a good barometer to determine what content or other click elements work best on a website

Examples of events that can be

tracked; and some can be set up as a conversion goal as well.

• PDF downloads

• Outbound links (like to LinkedIn) • Mobile phone calls

• Email submissions

• Form button “submits” when no

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Enter Google Tag Manager (GTM)

• GTM is a Google tool that allows marketers create events, track

conversions, or optimize advertising activity by adding custom HTML and java script codes without involving IT or website managers every time a new event or ad tracking pixel is needed.

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Events with GTM

Here are some examples of events we can set up with GTM

• Form submit buttons (when no

Thank you page)

• Mobile calls (since they require clicks)

• Email clicks • Video clicks

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Events with GTM

Here’s an example of creating an event to measure the

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Advertising Tracking with GTM

• The goal of implementing tracking

pixels is that when they fire, the ad platforms become aware, and serve ads based on click and conversion behavior.

• In the example:

• AdWords conversion pixel fires on

“thank you” pages.

• Facebook, Twitter, and retargeting

platforms track visits for retargeting and conversion optimization

purposes.

• Most ad networks, DSPs (Demand

Side Platforms), exchanges offer pixels for websites and landing

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Example 1: Adwords Conversion Tag

“Fires” the tag when page URL

contains Thank-you Then, AdWords can optimize bidding based on conversion data

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Example 2: Demand Side Ad Platform

(DSP) or Ad Network

Tag fires when applications are submitted or purchases are made (checkout success). This conversion pixel

allows networks to optimize ad delivery towards websites or audience segments most likely to convert

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Example 3: Facebook

Facebook’s pixel tracks every page on your site or landing page. Once set up, events can also be tracked by including a unique conversion code to track specific actions. These are listed to the right. For lead gen, the bottom two conversion events, lead and

complete registration are most common.

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Facebook Conversion Process

Facebook has an alternative method to track conversions as well. Called custom conversions, these are based on various page URL rules.

• The purpose of setting up

conversions on Facebook is to allow the platform to optimize campaign performance based on website or landing page

conversion goals.

• To the left is an example of a lead conversion, because the URL

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Example 4: Other Media

Twitter has its own tracking pixels for Twitter ad conversion optimization and retargeting

Many default tags are available on GTM from trusted partners. Facebook is an example of a custom HTML tag

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Goal and Lead Values

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Goal Value of Leads

• The value of a lead is an essential metric in order to compute ROI with

Google Analytics. Values help determine how conversions impact business. • By assigning different levels of values to conversions, you can weight which

conversions are more important, if actual cost per lead values aren’t available.

• Determining a Goal Value

• Have the average value of a sale (including lifetime value) handy and a

lead-to-sale conversion rate. If your average lead-to-sale is $5,000, and your close rate is 5%, then the goal lead value is $250 (Average sale x close rate)

• Google Analytics measures value of ALL leads, whether qualified or not, so be

sure to calculate the value for all leads.

• If you do not track lead to sale conversion rate, you can estimate value by the

type of conversion as we have shown earlier.

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Setting Up Goal Values

• You can give your goal conversions a

value, especially if you have various conversions to track.

• Let’s say 10% of inquiries become

MQLs, and 10% of MQLs become sales; and your average sale is $5,000. This means that 1% of inquiries become sales, so a goal value for a content download inquiry could be $50.

• Or, you can use value to weight an

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Event Values

• You can give specific key events values as well, again depending on estimated sales conversion rates and value of a sale.

• This is an example of an Email goal event tracked as a

conversion, using the event value as a goal value.

• When measuring media

performance, you may wish to also give small values to items such as pages per session (like over 3), duration (over 2 minutes), or non-gated PDF downloads (no form)

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Calculating ROI with Conversion Goal Value

Calculating ROI with Google Analytics using goal values:

• ((Goal Value – Advertising Cost) / Advertising Cost) x 100 = ROI

• Example: Goal value of a lead conversion goal is $500, and the advertising cost

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Using Goal Value; Example 1

To measure ROI of lead generation campaigns over a given time period, we create an Excel chart with all of the channels and lead values, with the ROI calculation ((Goal value x leads) – Cost)/Cost)

For the below example, paid search has broken even, and content

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Goal Value Example 2

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Goal Value Example 3

• Here’s an example of a paid search channel, comparing three ad groups and four campaigns. Two of the white paper campaigns rotated in the

Researching solution keywords Ad group. In this scenario, the free trial

shows the best ROI, and white paper #1 performing better than white paper #2.

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ROI and Google Adwords

With Adwords, we can now track revenue per click and ROI based on compiled goal values from your campaigns.

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Summary: Two methods for computing

lead value

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Goal Values on GA Reports

Remember, goal values can be measured for non-advertising channels. Thus, they can give you a measure of how each paid and non-paid source contribute to lead generation by

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Measuring Website Leads

with Google Analytics

A look at reporting

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Conversion Reporting with Google Analytics

• Channel • Medium • Source • Campaign • Landing page • Ad Content • Keyword • Referral • Social Media

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BY

Secondary Dimensions

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Google Analytics Default Traffic Source

Dimensions: More Detail

• Source: The origin of your traffic (Google, Facebook, Newsletter, Ad Network, Publisher, Blog)

• Medium: Every source has a medium; which is defined as the type of source Google defines the traffic (Organic, cpc or cost per click campaigns,

referral, or “none” which is direct traffic to your site)

• Keyword: If prospects aren’t signed into Google (a Google email account), keywords can be tracked. Most keyword traffic comes from when secure search occurs and people are signed into a Google account, and show as “not provided”

• Campaign: Names of campaigns from AdWords or custom campaigns from

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Segments

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Custom Segments

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By combining dimensions and segments very detailed (or

a bit overwhelming) analyses can be done.

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At the end of the day..

• All the data you can measure is great, but you really want to have a plan of what reports are meaningful that lead generation decisions can be made on. We help clients define these goals and develop custom reports that make data analysis easier. Example analyses:

• How do mobile conversion rates compare to desktop? Does the mobile site or

lead gen tactic need to be tweaked to improve conversion rates on mobile devices?

• What sources and channels generate the best conversion rates, conversion

values, and ROI?

• Do some campaigns perform better than others over time; or do some

campaigns perform better on display channels than social channels?

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Advanced Conversion

Reporting

A look at goal paths, multi-channel funnels, and attribution

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Reverse Goal Path

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Goal URL Report

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Top Conversion Paths

Google Analytics includes some special reports to address the effect of a channel’s (and a source/medium’s) role within the conversion process.

• The Top Conversion Paths reports answer these questions and others by showing how your marketing channels work together to create sales and conversions

• This basically measures the prospect’s click journey to conversion, and what channels are used to research, then perform a conversion at the end.

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Assisted Conversions

• The Assisted Conversions report

summarizes the roles and

contributions of your channels. A channel can play two roles in a conversion path:

• Last click conversion is the

interaction that immediately precedes the conversion.

• Assisted conversion is any

interaction that is on the conversion path but is not the last click

conversion.

• So this gives another look at how

channels (and sources/mediums) when clicked, contribute to a

conversion via another channel.

• And this is all because many of

those who click on display ads, email, or social ads are in attention or interest mode, but not convert or buy mode.

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Time Lag

• The Time Lag report shows you

how many days it takes a user to perform a goal. It’s

interesting to compare same day visits with future visits, all the way up to 90 days. Again, nurture programs can take longer with long buying cycles in B2B, but at least here we can measure 90 day decisions.

• This is more of a website

report rather than a landing page report, so it takes into account how your content and retargeting can bring prospects back to convert on your

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Path Length

• Path Length is similar to Time

Lag, except that instead of measuring days to conversion, Path Length measures the number of visits (via various channels) to conversion. The sample to the right shows a majority of the conversions occurring after two visits which is really good.

• After three visits, it is taking

people longer to make a decision to convert. The best way to increase shorter visit conversion paths is to have more compelling website

content and more opportunities for lead capture, especially

within blog pages.

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Google Analytics Report

Notes

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Direct Traffic and non-trackable data

• Direct traffic is typically website visits with no identified source; usually a visit directly from a typing the URL of your website into a browser. However, if there is no identifiable source of traffic, like an untagged email click, then this is also put under Direct traffic. Again the importance of campaign

tagging.

• Source = None, when the medium is Direct Traffic

• “Not Provided”: As stated elsewhere, this phrase shows as a keyword if a query is done on Google’s engine and the user is logged into Google at the time of the search.

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The dreaded “Not Set”

• This usually denotes an issue with

tracking, as Google is having issues with determining the source of the visit.

• If you see “not set” showing up as

the source or medium, it is likely from a mis-tagged link. If “not set” shows up for campaign or ad

content, it is likely because these traffic sources did not have

campaign or content information.

• If you see “not set” in your Paid

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Attribution Modeling

Giving credit to multi-touch campaigns

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Why Attribution Modeling

So you’ve read about goal lead value for each conversion on your website or landing page, and about analyzing goal value with primary/secondary

dimensions and segments, AND you recently have seen reports that show how channels work together to generate a last-click conversion.

BUT as you can surmise, is that all of those other channels that generated non-converted clicks or assisted conversions do have value, and attribution attempts to put a monetary lead value on these channels that contribute to final last-click conversions.

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The Seven Default Attribution Models in

Google Analytics

• Last Interaction Model

The Last Interaction model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the last channel with which the customer interacted before buying or converting. It’s the best model if your campaigns are purely designed for impulse decision-making

• Last Non-Direct Click Model

This is the default model in Google Analytics. Use this model to compare to other models. The last non-direct click model attributes conversion credit to the last channel in the conversion path that is not direct.

• Last AdWords Click Model

The Last AdWords Click model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the most recent AdWords ad that the customer clicked before buying or converting. Use this to analyze

AdWords’ effectiveness no matter at what point a click happens in the conversion path.

• First Interaction Model

The First Interaction model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the first channel with which the customer interacted. This model is appropriate if you run ads or campaigns to create initial awareness of your brand.

• Linear Model

The linear model provides equal credit to all channels involved in a conversion path. If there are five channels in the conversion path, each will get 20% of the credit for the conversion. Thus, you give equal credit to each touch point in the buyer’s journey.

• Time Decay Model

The time decay model most heavily credits the touch points that occurred nearest to the time of conversion. This is a great model when

measuring promotional campaigns and you want to give more value to clicks closest to a conversion rather than earlier.

• Position Based Model

The position based model provides more credit to the first and last channels in the conversion process while distributing the rest of the credit equally to the channels in-between. Use this model to give the heaviest credit to first and last click conversions.

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Attribution Examples

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Content Marketing &

Nurture

A brief overview of content measurement

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Measuring Content Marketing: A KPI List

• Enewsletter subscription growth

• Content consumption via downloads (via event tracking and form conversions)

• Formats and media type engagement (text, video, audio)

• Event registrations

• Social media engagement (likes, retweets, shares)

• Email opens and clicks; comparing blast with nurture email metrics

• Pipeline influence; sales-leads, opportunities, revenue

These are some of the items worth measuring in order to evaluate

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Content Measurement Grid; Metric Pillars

What to Measure Content KPIs

REACH • Impressions

• Traffic

• Subscribers

• How many readers of pages and content assets?

• How many blog and newsletter

subscribers?

ENGAGEMENT • Time on page

• Bounce rate • Social sharing

• Are people spending time with your

content?

• Are they sharing and interacting with it?

CONVERSIONS • Lead generation

• Opportunities • Sales lift

• Are you driving quality leads?

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Stages of Content

For B2B lead generation, customer acquisition takes time. Content needs to be strategically planned throughout the buying cycle.

Each buying stage has its own set of metrics:

• Awareness • Consideration • Purchase

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MQL Report Cards

NuSpark Marketing, 2016 Using a mix of Google Analytics, Marketing

Automation and your CRM, you should be measuring your MQL results

consistently, and optimizing based on trends

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Back to Google Analytics: Content

Groupings

• An optional primary dimension within Google Analytics, Content Groupings lets you group content into a logical structure that reflects how you think about your site. In other words, you can aggregate content into themes, and measure conversions by these themes. The analysis can give you clues on what people like to read and engage with on your website.

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Content Grouping Examples

• Content Groupings are in the Admin section of GA. Here are examples of some content

groupings that you may wish to measure (up to 5)

• URLs contain (or do not contain) “blog”

• URLs contain (or do not contain) “PDF”

• URLs contain “Services” (to track service page visitors)

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Nurture Metrics

• Many marketing automation platforms include robust reporting features that can help measure what occurs

after initial inquiries are generated due to marketing campaigns. Some of the key nurturing metrics to be analyzed:

• Open rates: Measures the relevance of your message, offers and subject-lines as it relates to the quality

of your list segments

• Click-through rates: The percentage of email recipients who click on a link within an email. Content

relevancy as promoted in the email is the biggest factor here.

• Lead-to-conversion time: If lead scoring is implemented properly, and content relevant, prospects should

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Analyzing Nurture Campaigns

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Multi-touch Analytics

Marketo’s (Marketing Automation Platform) includes a

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More Information on Marketing

Measurement

• For more information on measuring media and various other lead generation topics, visit our website to download ebooks such as: • A Strategic Guide to Lead Generation using Pay-Per-Click

• The Great Online Display Advertising Guide

• Convert! Optimizing Website and Landing Pages for Lead Generation

• And More.

• http://www.nusparkmarketing.com/ebooks-webinars-b2b-content/

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About NuSpark Marketing

We are a team of marketers who craft and implement online B2B and B2C marketing programs focused on a single goal…generating demand for our clients.

Our Approach: We start with the end in mind…leads and sales opportunities…and work from there using the three building blocks of a successful marketing program…

• Create

We craft your buyer personas and content strategy. Then, we create compelling content that attracts prospects, converts leads and shortens your buying cycle.

• Connect

We connect your company with your target audience and build relationships via social media, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and online display.

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Contact Us

• NuSpark Marketing

• http://www.nusparkmarketing.com/

• (610) 604- 0639

• Ask for Paul Mosenson, Founder and President

• Mailto:[email protected]