The 3-Part Checklist for Tracking Paid Ads
Tracking the performance of your marketing campaigns and their results on your ecommerce site can feel tedious and complicated, making it tempting to put tracking on the backburner. Why get caught up in the weeds when you could spend that time creating and optimizing more ads, right?
The problem with not tracking ads is that your paid marketing is only as good as your data is helpful. Not to mention, being a data-driven company is the only way you’ll be able to achieve consistent, predictable success.
Tracking Ads: Bad Marketing or Bad Data?
If you’re not tracking results correctly and optimizing accordingly, your marketing plan is basically gambling. The only way to learn whether your campaigns are successful and to adjust accordingly is to have correct tracking in place and know how to read it.
While it might feel like a hindrance, the ability to track data and see what effect your ads are having on your site in real time is a benefit of digital marketing over traditional advertising. So take advantage of it!
The Value of Tracking Ads
Most advertising and marketing platforms make setting up proper tracking simple, but there are lots of ways to look at the data, and attribution gets messy, so it can be confusing to know where to start. For tracking ads to be effective, you need to know you’re measuring the right metrics (and doing it accurately) before you do anything else.
You’ve likely heard the saying “garbage in, garbage out,” and that’s true for marketing, too. If your tracking isn’t set up and read correctly, the “results” you’re reading don’t mean anything.
If you have the right tracking set up, you can’t fail with any marketing campaign. Sure, the end goal is to convert customers, but even if you don’t, the data provides learning so you can systematically improve marketing with each campaign.
In this post, we’ll talk about the three kinds of tracking you should implement before running any paid ads, what they’re used for, and how they work together. Let’s get into it.
The 3 Categories of Tracking for Paid Ecommerce Ads
There are several methods for tracking ad campaign performance and the effects they have on your site. These methods can be boiled down to three main categories you need to get right.
1. Ad Platform Integration
Main Function: Provides the marketing platform with information from your site so the platform’s algorithm can continuously optimize for better results.
Person Responsible: Ad Engineer or Specialist, Media Buyer
The data you see within your ad platform comes from the digital ad platform’s tracking pixel placed on your site (for example, your Facebook Pixel or Google Ads snippet). This pixel watches what users do on your site after clicking on your ads and uses that to optimize your ads for better results.
Tracking is simple to install on your ecommerce store, especially if you use Shopify or Shopify Plus. The key is to make sure the pixel is tracking key events on your site, such as email sign-ups, content views, adding to cart, initiating checkout, and purchases. For most platforms (like Shopify), these events are automatically configured when you add the tracking code to the site, but it’s important to verify they’re tracking correctly — if your store or ad platform doesn’t add these automatically, you’ll need to add them manually and confirm they’re working.
The importance of proper pixel installation and tracking setup with your ad platform can’t be overemphasized. If you’re spending money on paid advertising, it’s critical to accurately track what users do when they get to your site so you can see what results you’re getting and learn how to optimize your ads to perform better.
2. Ecommerce Analytics
Main Function: Provides information needed about your website’s performance in relation to all marketing channels (paid and organic). Helps your business make the right decisions about what needs improvement and answers questions about weak areas on your site.
Person Responsible: Executive Level/Leadership
When it comes to ecommerce analytics, the most common tracking tool is Google Analytics. It’s simple to install, but what you do with Google Analytics is the important part. You must be tracking key events and actual revenue for each purchase in order for Analytics to be an effective tool for your business.
Google Analytics has so much data available that it can be overwhelming, so let’s think about it this way: GA is the place to go to dig into questions you have about your site and problems you’re seeing.
For example, you might’ve had a great month but want to have a big-picture understanding of how each channel contributed to that bump in traffic or revenue. Or you may notice your conversion rate’s down and need to understand where that dip’s coming from.
One important thing to note is that Google Analytics can and should be used to guide your business, but it’s best to use this to find answers, not create questions. With so much data available, it can be tempting to get taken down a rabbit hole of metrics that seem like a big deal but aren’t relevant to your ecommerce goals. Instead, approach GA with a specific question (like “What’s contributing to the decrease in conversions this month?”) and let the data provide an answer.
3. Third-Party Tracking Tools
Main Function: Provide additional data for certain areas of your site to help scale and optimize your overall marketing efforts.
Person Responsible: Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Manager
Additional tracking tools, such as heatmaps and user recordings, can be very useful in understanding what’s happening with user traffic on your site. Your team may be wondering why a marketing campaign is driving so much traffic but users aren’t buying, or why users are adding to cart but not completing checkout. These additional tracking tools help you “look over the shoulder” of a user to see what they’re clicking on and where they get stuck.
Remember, the success of your marketing is a team effort. Ads, email marketing, organic components, your website, and other factors all play a role in getting the site visitor through checkout. Extra tracking tools can provide visibility into all these areas and give indications of how well your site is converting customers.
Start Tracking Your Ads Today
Wondering if you have proper tracking installed for your marketing ads? If you don’t have that sorted out yet, now’s the time. It’s often overlooked, but the ability to read data and use it to inform your business decisions is the only way to achieve consistent, predictable growth year after year.
Think of it as your company’s eyes. On the body, the eyes are a very small part of the entire system, but they’re essential for moving and acting with clarity and focus. This is exactly what tracking does for your business. And it’s worth taking the time to get it right.
If you’re not sure which tools to use, reach out to us, and we can recommend some that could be helpful for your business.
