Marketing 201: Tracking & Automation

In Marketing 101, we covered the basics of what marketing is and why it matters. Simply, it is the process of letting people know you exist. In Marketing 201, we will dive into two critical components of effective marketing: tracking and automation. These tools can help you understand your audience better, optimize your marketing efforts, and save time

Tracking: Why It Matters

Tracking, the process of collecting data on you marketing efforts.

Tracking doesn't have to be complicated but it requires some up front setup. The simpler, the better!

Before you automate anything, it is important to track results so you can understand:

The attempts
Where to tried
The results

Now you can decide how to fine tune, improve, and automate your marketing efforts.

How to Track Your Marketing Efforts

Tracking is specific to HOW you market. Let's break that down below

In Person

You met people at the event. Guess what? That is marketing. This is a COMMON miss since people send "sales" teams to events and forget this is a MARKETING activity. Treat it properly. You can track that by:

Manually entering every business card you get into a spreadsheet or CRM.
Scanning the business cards into your CRM with a 3rd party app or a smart CRM that has this feature built in.
Having a QR code or sign up form that people use.
Asking people to text you or email you to get on your list. Smart CRMs can link this for you

Website

The holy grail that you control. This is where you can track everything. Integrating it across other channels allows you to gain insight on how people find you from other sources too!

Use Google Analytics to track website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. This is hard. It has a lot of features and can be overwhelming, but it is the most powerful AND free tool out there. It is best to learn the marketing flow like you are reading now, then pay someone to set up your website and tracking based on those principles!
Use UTM parameters in your URLs to track the source of your traffic. This is a simple way to see which marketing channels are driving the most traffic to your website.
Set up conversion tracking to see which marketingß efforts are leading to sales or other desired actions. This can be done through tools like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or your CRM.
Use heatmaps and session recordings to understand how users interact with your website. This can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your user experience.
Use A/B testing to compare different versions of your website or marketing materials to see which performs better. This can help you make data-driven decisions about your marketing strategy.
Always send leads to the CRM! The CRM and your marketing tools should work together, otherwise