Answers
Aug 21, 2017 - 05:57 PM
Consider looking into Segment or MixPanel. With proper implementation, both should enable you to track activity for individual users. The first time a new user visits your site a unique id will be assigned to their browser/cookie and all events triggered by that user moving forward will be aggregated under that id.
If your WebApp requires account creation to perform certain actions, you can set up these tools to tie unique Ids and their corresponding activity to the user accounts.
As long as you have UTM parameters present in all of your Ad URLs those UTMs will be recorded by the tools when users trigger events on your site.
Once you have all of the above you will be able to track and store the data and run different attribuion models against it to measure ROI across your advertising channels. At this point, the attribution model you choose is up-to-you, depending on specifics of your business. Here is an example of some of the most common attribution models.
I suggest to always run several models to get a better understanding of each advertising channel's contribution. For Ex: Remarketing would have more weight if your attribution is Last Touch and will have less weight if it is First Touch.
And Last but not Least:
When it comes to calculating marketing ROI (Return on Investment) it should be calculated against you Gross Margin or Gross Profit, and not revenue. When you calculate marketing spend against revenue the metric is cold ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and is often confused with ROI (as many people think it's the same thing).
If your WebApp requires account creation to perform certain actions, you can set up these tools to tie unique Ids and their corresponding activity to the user accounts.
As long as you have UTM parameters present in all of your Ad URLs those UTMs will be recorded by the tools when users trigger events on your site.
Once you have all of the above you will be able to track and store the data and run different attribuion models against it to measure ROI across your advertising channels. At this point, the attribution model you choose is up-to-you, depending on specifics of your business. Here is an example of some of the most common attribution models.
I suggest to always run several models to get a better understanding of each advertising channel's contribution. For Ex: Remarketing would have more weight if your attribution is Last Touch and will have less weight if it is First Touch.
And Last but not Least:
When it comes to calculating marketing ROI (Return on Investment) it should be calculated against you Gross Margin or Gross Profit, and not revenue. When you calculate marketing spend against revenue the metric is cold ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and is often confused with ROI (as many people think it's the same thing).
Aug 22, 2017 - 08:43 PM
How you track ROI really depends on the type of product or service you are selling. One time purchases are obviously easier and you can set up most conversion pixels to dynamically pass the cart value to whatever tracking system you are using.
When it comes to tracking lifetime ROI for a reoccurring customer or a subscription service, it becomes a bit trickier but is certainly doable. I would recommend creating a unique user ID that is passed via a URL parameter or through the JavaScript whenever user purchases. This way you can connect that specific user to the method of promotion that brought them in and the (as long as that information is also passed at the same time).
In terms of it taking several visits before a customer converts, Google Analytics is great at tracking this and quite easy to use, but there are plenty of other, more advanced options that people swear by such as Convertro and Adometry. For Google Analytics you could simply include a URL parameter for each promotion method. If you wanted to get more granular you could also include parameters for specific campaigns or even specific ads.
That said, being able to track customer journeys is only part of the picture. The most important question is to what extent each touch point influenced the sale. If you know your customer saw a banner ad, then searched and clicked an organic link, then finally purchased through a Facebook ad, it could mean a million different things. It is important to look at different attribution models (last click, first click, time decay, etc.) to see different views on what combination of marketing tactics is the most effective. There is unfortunately no on-size fits all answer this problem, which even fortune 100 companies are struggling with.
I would ultimately recommend getting your feet wet with Google Analytics if you haven’t attempted attribution already. There is a great deal of literature online on setting it up to track attribution and can do the job well for most small businesses.
When it comes to tracking lifetime ROI for a reoccurring customer or a subscription service, it becomes a bit trickier but is certainly doable. I would recommend creating a unique user ID that is passed via a URL parameter or through the JavaScript whenever user purchases. This way you can connect that specific user to the method of promotion that brought them in and the (as long as that information is also passed at the same time).
In terms of it taking several visits before a customer converts, Google Analytics is great at tracking this and quite easy to use, but there are plenty of other, more advanced options that people swear by such as Convertro and Adometry. For Google Analytics you could simply include a URL parameter for each promotion method. If you wanted to get more granular you could also include parameters for specific campaigns or even specific ads.
That said, being able to track customer journeys is only part of the picture. The most important question is to what extent each touch point influenced the sale. If you know your customer saw a banner ad, then searched and clicked an organic link, then finally purchased through a Facebook ad, it could mean a million different things. It is important to look at different attribution models (last click, first click, time decay, etc.) to see different views on what combination of marketing tactics is the most effective. There is unfortunately no on-size fits all answer this problem, which even fortune 100 companies are struggling with.
I would ultimately recommend getting your feet wet with Google Analytics if you haven’t attempted attribution already. There is a great deal of literature online on setting it up to track attribution and can do the job well for most small businesses.
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