What are conversions and why should they be used?

How do I know if I am spending my money on advertising or if I am really investing it to increase my customer base? 

"That which cannot be measured cannot be improved" -William Thomson Kelvin, creator of the scale  Kelvin temperature

In the marketing, a conversion refers to an action that a prospect takes on our website, online store or blog. These actions can be very varied, ranging from a simple click on any of the site's tabs to registering a sale. 

The correct measurement of conversions helps us to know if our marketing campaign is already in Google Ads, Facebook Ads or on some other platform you are really achieving your desired goals. 

Some of the most used conversions for web analysis are:

1. Sale
2. Form filling
3. Click on call or message button
4. Subscription to a newsletter
5. Application or file downloads

Unfortunately, conversion tracking is not generated automatically when creating a campaign. For this reason, it is necessary that once ads are being displayed, we manually assign a follow-up to the actions that you want to measure. 

That is, each website must have its own very well identified objectives. For example, a law firm will surely try to measure how many new prospects were generated thanks to the advertisement they are implementing. To measure this, you must assign as conversion the filling of the form or a click on a call or message button. 

However, an online store will find it of little value for someone to submit a contact form. Well, really what they are looking for is that sales are being made through their platform. For this reason, it is necessary that when having an internet page, it is necessary to define very well which actions have a great value and are wanted to measure to know the effectiveness of a campaign. 

How can conversions be measured?

There are multiple ways to measure them, however, there are two that are the most used. The first is through a thank you page and the second is through clicks.

Thank you page

A thank you page is used to redirect prospects once they have submitted a form or completed a sale. At first glance, it seems that what is sought is to create a warmth and friendliness on the site. However, this goes further than that. Normally, this section helps us to identify that an action that we were looking to measure was really executed, as the prospect went from clicking on an ad to actually showing an interest in our product or service. 

What are the steps to measure my conversions through this page?

For example, if you are creating ads in Google Ads then you should do the following:

1. Create the mentioned page
2. Enter your campaign in Google Ads and follow the route
   • Tools and Settings
   • Measurement
   • Conversions
   • Click the "plus" button under conversion actions
   • Click on website
   • Follow the steps mentioned
   • Select option "Install tag manually"
3. Install the global tag on your website (global site tag) and the event snippet on your thank you page.

Note: In case of not knowing about basic programming, it is advisable to contact its developer. On the other hand, if you created your site on a platform such as WordPress or Wix, you can review the tutorials that these platforms offer so that you can install it.

4. Verify that the tag was installed correctly in the conversions section. It should show up as "Logging conversions".

Button clicks

On the other hand, sometimes it is not necessary to create a thank you page. Well, the nature of the event does not require it. For this reason, conversions on site buttons can also be measured. 

What steps should I take to measure my conversions in this way?

For example, if you are creating ads in Google Ads then you should do the following:

1. Identify the button to be measured
2. Enter your campaign in Google Ads and follow the route
   • Tools and Settings
   • Measurement
   • Conversions
   • Click the "plus" button under conversion actions
   • Click on website
   • Follow the steps mentioned
   • Select option "Use Google Tag Manager"
3. Link your website with Google Tag Manager
4. Once inside Google Tag Manager:

• Enter Variables> configure> enable click classes, click id, click url, click text.
• Then go to Triggers> set a name> set the tag with "Google Ads Conversion Tracking"> Choose a trigger, either click class, id, etc.

Note: You need to inspect your page code to find what values to assign to the button. It should be displayed as id = {example}

 5. Test the conversion tracking with a test click.

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