Get my Free Digital Marketing Jumpstart Kit<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nTrack conversions via first and last interactions.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The second example I want to share it for you today aside from looking at your Google Search Console is actually tracking conversions in terms of both first and last interactions. So the reason why this is really important is because if you’re building all your content marketing for the purposes of generating leads, but not actually generating leads and your content marketing is probably not hitting on enough pain points for the prospects that you’re targeting. So it’s really important that you’re actually tracking how many leads you’re getting from your content marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to do so, you’re probably going to need to use something like Google Analytics or Google tag manager. For the example today, I’m going to be using Google Analytics and then I’m going to be using their model comparison tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In case you don’t know, Google Analytics uses the last attribution model. What this means is that if somebody were to visit your blog and then go to your demo page and then convert on your demo page. The demo page is actually the page that’s going to get the conversion attributed to it because that’s the last page that somebody was on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So even though they initially entered your website from the blog page, the blog will not be credited using the last attribution model. It’s for this reason why it’s really important to look at things from both a last attribution, as well as a first attribution standpoint. Something important to note is that you don’t want to be summative in terms of your attribution here. So don’t sum your last interaction people with your first interaction people. That is just going to lead to some potential double counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Google Analytics model comparison tool result<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So the model comparison tool is going to use the goals that you set up in Google Analytics. So if you haven’t already created goals for yourself, you’re going to want to that first. Goals are essentially destination links that you go to when somebody is a qualified lead. So if, for example, you have a thanks page, you might want to set your go up to that thanks page. So in this situation, I’ve got a goal set up and what I’m showing you here is a set up for a report in which I’ve pulled everything up until this point in time when I’m recording this video and it’s everything for the quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it’s starting from July 1st to September 24th. I’ve gone ahead and set my look back period to 90 days. That means that I want Google to look at the last three months worth of data in terms of when it’s reporting all the things here, and then I’ve gone ahead and also only selected the goal that I have set up around qualified leads. That way I can filter for all the people that are directly attributed to qualified leads coming from my blog posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From here, I’ve gone ahead and added two new respective things to consider in this model comparison for first interaction, as well as linear. The last attribution is the default method of how Google Analytics tracks things. First attribution is essentially going to tell you exactly where they first came in and give attribution there. And then linear is actually going to distribute all the different forms of channels into equal points in terms of what each of those channels should get credit for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from here, what I’m going to see is from all these blog posts, these eight blog posts that have actually seen some form of conversion, I have no last interactions attributable to my blog post. So from a primary level, that would be really concerning, right? It would mean that literally none of my blog posts have led to qualified leads. But when you think about that, it makes sense because in many cases, people aren’t going to be converting directly from a blog post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They might be going from a blog post to a landing page where they would then convert into a qualified lead. So it’s for this reason why the first interaction section here is actually really important. Because what I see here is that these blog posts have actually generated four leads already so far. So in this case, you can see that the last interaction model would not have attributed any leads from my content marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, in this situation, when I look at the first interaction, I actually see that four leads here initially interacted with my blog before they converted later on in the funnel, in terms of other pages on my site. So, this is really important because what this tells me is that I wouldn’t have given any credit to my content marketing efforts if I had only looked at things from a last attribution standpoint, instead of also considering the first attribution as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from tracking your blog posts, you also want to check out how your freebies are doing. This quarter, I’ve released one freebie so far, and I haven’t done a full on distribution push yet. However, I can go ahead and use the model comparison tool to still pull in key insights around how this particular freebie might be doing. So what I see here is that by using the same settings, in terms of model attribution, this one freebie has one attributable last interaction that is a conversion to a qualified lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then three that can be attributed to coming in originally from this freebie. So again, the same logic here applies, and that if I had only looked at things from the last attribution standpoint, I would have only been able to account for one lead coming in from this freebie whereas in this case, when I start to look at it from a first interaction standpoint, what this means is that three people initially came in from this freebie and then later became a qualified lead for my business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, again, this is why attribution is really important because if I’d only looked at it from the last attribution standpoint, I would have only seen one lead convert from this freebie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If you take nothing else from this article, I hope you remember two things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- The first thing is that it’s really important that you are showing up on Google in terms of getting more impressions and clicks when you are in your early days of content marketing.<\/li>
- The second thing that’s even more important is to make sure that you are tracking conversions for your content marketing efforts. If you’re spending all this money in content marketing and not getting conversions, then there’s no point in you actually content marketing. It’s not working. So you need to prove out your channel, and one of the best ways to do that is using the model comparison.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
If you liked this article, be sure to check out my YouTube channel<\/a> to get new videos every single week. I\u2019ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from learning how to know when your content marketing is working early on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n