Why Conversion Goals Are Essential for Performance Tracking

You care about conversions – it’s the name of the game when it comes to selling your product or service. Every newly acquired user, every product sold, it all begins and ends with a conversion.

Understanding the importance of conversions, not just for how your money is spent but for how you can track your performance – is key to developing a solid digital marketing strategy.

What is a Conversion Goal?

From clicking a button to filling out a detailed form, conversions come at each stage of your funnel. Any time a user performs a specified action in response to your messaging, that is a conversion – and the goal you set for that action is your conversion goal.

In performance marketing, conversions are important key performance indicators (KPIs) that signal a strategy’s success. Customers pay marketing agencies based on conversions – and setting conversion goals benefits the brand by creating spending limitations and growth targets. 

For example, a conversion goal might identify an objective number of click-throughs, and when that number is reached, the marketing campaign ends. The brand doesn’t spend an excess of what they planned for, eliminating wasteful ad spend.

Conversion goals also help create growth targets, for audience reach, sales, or another parameter. As brands look for paths to expand their business, conversion goals can be an efficient way to determine those targets for success.

Common Types of Conversions

There is no set definition of what an ecommerce conversion must be, but you’ll likely run into the following types:

Purchase: The most common type of conversion. An easy target for ecommerce brands is to shoot for the sale of a product or service.

Click-through: When users click on an ad that directs them to your website, that is called a click-through. Gaining website visitors via ads is a meaningful conversion goal for most brands.

Form submission: Anytime users fill out a form, you see a form conversion. Those include sign-ups for newsletters, email lists, and text message notifications, as well as requests for information, price quotes, or product demonstrations.

Account creation: Creating an account or profile tends to involve a form submission, but tracking account creation conversions independently can be helpful in some markets.

Social media: Social media conversions include engagements like content shares, comments and likes, and new followers – but you can also get link clicks and page views from your socials too.

App installs: Brands navigating the world of mobile apps include app installs in their conversion metrics.

Conversions in customer support, such as a user accessing support materials or filling out a survey, as well as other downloads, print-outs, subscriptions, and reviews or ratings, are also commonly tracked and charged conversions.

Tracking Performance Goals Using Conversions

Tracking conversions lets you optimize for better marketing campaigns, better performance, and better user engagement. Whatever your business goals, conversion tracking gives you key insight into where you have room to grow.

Most conversion tracking is reliant on machine learning. For example, Google Analytics lets users with Google Ads accounts see their data categorized by the type of conversion goal, including standard goals, account-default goals, and custom goals. There is innumerable software available for small business owners and marketing professionals alike to access superior conversion analytics for improved performance insight.

When looking at your conversion rate data, evaluating it to identify missing pieces is essential for tracking performance. For instance, regarding website conversions, consider the specific action you want users to take, and what conversions it will take to get them there. If your final conversion action is a purchase, what do users need to do before they click the checkout button? They might head to your landing page, read your reviews there, and add a product to their cart. Or, visitors find your brand via a sponsored social post, then head to your site via the social platform, and explore product pages from there. Is each micro-conversion comfortable for users? If not, explore ways to streamline and to optimize the customer journey.

Identifying conversion attributions also plays a significant part in establishing the most effective digital marketing strategy. Assess what works and what doesn’t with multivariate or A/B testing, configure your website and external spaces to encourage conversions, and drive customers through the marketing funnel.

Why You Need to Track Conversions

Because driving conversions is essential in every stage of the marketing funnel, it follows that understanding where those conversions come from, how they function, and whether they are successful, is vital for forecasting how your brand performs. If you don’t understand what drives new users to click the checkout button, how can you get more customers to head there? If you’re unaware of what ads bring in the most conversions to your site, how can you discover new ways to advertise that will hook consumers and take them to your web page?

An appreciation for the value of conversion data in determining how your brand is performing is crucial. Conversions are key: you need to know what is effective for your company, and you can use that data to influence your future strategy.

Understanding Content that Converts for Improved Performance

At First Media, we understand what your brand needs for better performance because our content is designed and executed to create conversions across a range of industries. Conversion tracking software alone can’t win against the experience and expertise required to understand why some content converts, while other content simply drains resources.

We bring users content that entices inbound traffic to convert, offering industry-leading production capabilities and the most effective proprietary AI technologies for performance marketers. Our media touches customers all along the marketing funnel with engaging digital storytelling in an omni-channel distribution. Work with First Media to reach your performance marketing goals and feed your sales funnel with content that converts.