Data collection is one of the most important elements when it comes to digital marketing. The great thing about digital marketing is that almost everything can be measured. Offline Conversion Tracking is another step in data analysis that is not yet widely used.
What is Offline Conversion Tracking?
Offline Conversion Tracking is the tracking that takes place after an online conversion. The best example is in the B2B context where a conversion is made on your website and a lead is generated. However, that lead may not lead to a deal and in some industries it can take anywhere from 3-24 months before a deal can be closed. The information about the lead that is collected after an online conversion has taken place is Offlie Conversion Tracking. This information can then be traced back to the campaign you ran and you can then more accurately calculate an ROI for a campaign or digital activity.
How do you implement Offline Conversion Tracking?
The classic way to use Offline Conversion Tracking is to tag all leads that come in during a campaign or via a specific landing page. Then you compile all the leads that have a certain tag and calculate what the business value is for that particular campaign.Today, it is possible to tag leads in marketing automation tools and CRM systems, which then also compile the results on an ongoing basis.
Why is Offline Conversion Tracking important?
Measuring the real business value and ROI of a campaign is the only way to show in black and white whether your marketing activities are profitable. It is possible to get an initial picture of whether a campaign or marketing effort has been profitable by giving an average value of a lead. The advantage of this is the speed of the evaluation where you can get a value on the lead the same day it comes in, no matter how long your sales processes are. However, it encourages getting as many leads in as possible and not as qualified leads as possible which can mean less efficiency and lower ROI for your marketing activities.
Optimisation and Offline Conversion Tracking
Optimising your digital marketing efforts is now a given for most people, and optimising by looking at real business value is the optimal approach for all digital marketers. For businesses with e-commerce or SaaS solutions that can be purchased directly through a conversion, it is easy to quickly measure and see the real value and optimise for those that make larger purchases or involve profitable deals. For B2B, it is much more difficult to optimise for real business value as the sales processes are longer. Realising after 24 months that the best conversion point was to download Guide X doesn't help you much as Guide X is likely to be in need of dating after 2 years and something else then is more interesting. But there are ways to qualify leads at an earlier stage like MQL or SQL that you can then optimize for. You won't be able to set a direct value but it will be a more precise value than an average value per lead that will, for example, value an interested student as highly as a big customer who is eager to buy.
Offline Conversion Tracking and Google Ads
If you work with Google Ads, Offline Conversion Tracking is a real value creator as you can import data back into Google Ads that will make Google Ads via their smartbidding automatically try to optimize for good conversions and not just conversions.Working this way involves a bit more work but in short, you set up a hidden collector in the forms that you have as a conversion point. That collector picks up an encrypted Google Ads ID which you then send back into Google Ads.The results of implementing this measure mean that you are likely to get more good leads which is what we all want.
Summary
Offline Conversion Tracking is the conversion that takes place after a lead has become a lead and a deal or other type of qualification has taken place and which does not happen digitally.For B2B companies with long sales processes, Offline Conversion Tracking is a must in order to find out the real result of a campaign or marketing activity.Optimizing using Offline Conversion Tracking can be difficult when there are long sales processes but with the help of early lead qualification like MQL or SQL it is possible to optimize for it early.Combining Offline Conversion Tracking and Google Ads is very good for those who are interested in getting more good leads and not just getting more leads.Do you want to start working with Offline Conversion Tracking ? We will be happy to take a meeting and tell you how to go about it.Book an appointment with Contitude