One of the keys to building up a solid customer base is to not only understand what they’re buying but also to know how they make their buying decisions. That’s why digital tracking is a crucial first step for any business, providing you with insights into the behavior of the people who will be buying from you. And it’s a tool that gives you access to the behavior patterns of anyone with an internet connection who can then get served by one of your ads.
And even better: it doesn’t matter whether those internet users are doing online shopping or not. They could be planning a vacation. They could be looking online for a lawyer, physician, a new job, or a new bank. Once you understand what interests them by tracking their behavior digitally, you receive an opportunity to create ads that they are far more likely to engage with and to be able to publish these ads on websites and apps that you know they’re using.
But there’s still a lot that’s not commonly understood about those unseen pixels that are gathering information online, or how digital tracking can most effectively be used to boost sales.
What is a Tracking Pixel, and How Does It Work?
A tracking pixel is a simple concept: a graphic that can track web traffic, user behavior and site conversions on a site’s server level. It’s a tool that’s proven to be particularly useful to eCommerce store owners looking for a richer understanding of how web users interact and respond to their ads, email campaigns, or when they’re spending time on their website. There are a lot of ways marketers can take advantage of digital tracking as they launch their integrated marketing campaigns.
And that brings us to Cookies.
Among the oldest tracking technologies, a cookie is used to track how visitors engage with a website, and after being tracked by the cookie — a script added to a URL — the visitor can be served an ad that relates to the site or products they were viewing. This information is particularly useful to marketing agencies tracking those users so they can be certain to offer the right products to them.
It also allows companies to advertise to those users what the business wants them to know. In other words, if a user visits a lot of sites related to environmental issues, you can advertise that you’re an environmentally friendly and green company. You could also advertise to people with a commitment to social values, and so on. Understanding consumer behavior lets agencies adjust their marketing strategy and create more opportunities to boost revenue.
What is Digital Tracking?
Tools such as cookies, device IDs, IP mapping, and geo-location offer real-time insights into online consumer behavior. Understanding that behavior enhances a successful business marketing strategy since it allows you to target more customers and deliver to them the right kind of advertisements and information. The data you collect from digital tracking is more timely and relevant than if you didn’t have these tools at your disposal. It’s data that can help you predict the future activity of users so you can personalize your reach to them and improve their shopping experience.
Your marketing campaign is likely to be more appealing to the people reading your ads if you’re directly addressing their needs and the issues they’re hoping to solve. You can also collect and analyze data on personal issues that could influence the customer’s buying decision, such as their age, gender, and financial or family background. You can also understand their social behavior, including who they interact with from work, school, and social media platforms. That kind of knowledge lets marketers make significantly better choices when crafting the message of their ads.
Even better, there are some convenient tools available for gathering customer behavior. Google offers several tools, including:
- Google Surveys, which lets you create online surveys for customers to fill out, which can be used to target specific audiences.
- Google Analytics, the most popular digital analytics software, a free service that provides valuable insights on the visitors who come to your site.
- Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across numerous regions and languages, which lets you learn what’s popular and how to customize your marketing to the most current hot trends.
A similarly effective tool is YouTube Analytics. If part of your marketing strategy includes posting videos, YouTube Analytics lets you learn how to uncover trends to see what is and isn’t working, who’s watching your videos, what they otherwise like to watch, and, most importantly, which videos tend to make the most money.
Facebook Audience Insights will give you information about people connected to your social media page so you can create content that resonates with them.
What Are the Challenges Behind Digital Tracking?
While the concept behind Digital Tracking sounds simple, there’s still a lot that people don’t understand about how information on consumers gets collected, particularly since a lot of it is done anonymously. More importantly, what’s the most effective way to use the data you collect? How can you decide what kind of ad or content would best serve your sales goals?
And how do you avoid collecting too much information, to the point where it all seems overwhelming and leaves your marketing team at a loss on where to begin? After all, digital tracking, plugins, and cookies offer you the ability to collect data on millions of websites visited by consumers. How do you go about analyzing millions of data points?
First, it’s important to set some clear goals for what you hope to accomplish using digital tracking. There are a lot of benefits to digital tracking, but you’re going to be far more successful if you have a clear sense of how you want to use the data from the get-go.
Think about how some of the insights from digital tracking can be useful to you. That can include:
- What consumers put into their online basket and then purchase — and what they put in the basket and don’t end up buying;
- What people do while they’re shopping;
- How frequently they fill online baskets;
- Which SEO keywords are getting you the results you want.
The bottom line is digital tracking allows you to gather a lot of data, but you’ve got to determine how best to use it to get the best results for your company. But there’s no question that understanding real-world consumer journeys will help you make better business decisions, which is the main goal of tracking consumer behavior.
And it’s also going to enable you to create a much better customer experience, one that doesn’t rely on a single tracking software but rather gives you a mix of tools to enhance your marketing goals.
Learning the Most Effective Ways to Utilize Digital Tracking
There’s no question that digital tracking enables you to create a much better customer experience, one that doesn’t rely on a single tracking software but rather gives you a mix of tools to enhance your marketing goals. If you’re struggling to understand how digital tracking can boost your sales and the smartest ways to use it, we can help. At Market My Market, we collaborate closely with our clients to demonstrate the best ways to create content that improves the user experience for your customers, and delivers the content they’re looking for. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation.
