Visitors came, surfed, but did she buy?

An intriguing question and an answer to this will explain the actual return on investment (ROI), an answer that all of us seek. Tracking online conversion may be easy but what about people who convert offline, conversion that is triggered by online marketing activities. I am here to discuss with you all about the ways we could effectively track offline conversions.

 

A PPC conversion doesn't usually turn into a sale. When you sell technical products that need questions answered, that PPC conversion turns into a phone call. Even though a sale takes place, the PPC conversion will not get credit for it.

 

Thats correct.... really the only thing you can do is ask them in your phone call where they heard from you.

In fact its an important question you should ask all first time customers.

 

Linking sales that happen over the phone to your online marketing activities is one way of tracking offline conversions. But what about people who actually visit a physical store after seeing an advertisement online?? At the end of the say we online marketers need to justify our marketing budget, don't we?

 

Whats your budget Kneoteric?

 

Yes, thanks for your post. I will demostrate in my emails and calls with our customs.

 

Does anyone incorporate offline conversion tracking while evaluating the performance of their online marketing efforts??

 

So true...I got a client who has someone doing this for her for one of her sites.

At the end of the day... your expenditure should be justified by the increase in revenue.

 

you can track with a unique id.

For example if you are selling "Bags" online, when you promote offline you can offer a 10% discount and a coupon code.

The people never leave this offer if they decided to buy, so the sales that are used the coupon code are the sales because of the ofline promotion.

For this you can use asp, php, aspx scripts to track ot just by the payment processors.

 

The marketing budget is shrinking and we need every marketing dollar to perform well, and this could only be done if we use offline conversion tracking.

 

Brilliant, i was waiting for someone to come up with it. Tracking unique codes is a great way of knowing your offline conversions. Coupled with a discount it is highly unlikely that customers are not gonna use it.

 

Who would not want a discount now-a-days? lol

 

I know discounts are lucrative but the intention here is to not only drive sales but also track the originating point of the sales process. I thank you all for sharing your valuable comments and would like more distinguished members of the forum to share their views on it.

 

I put together ways of tracking offline conversion which happens as a direct result of online marketing effort.

1.Unique pricing variation
2.Call tracking
3.Reference codes
4.Customer Tagging
5.Order forms
6.Coupons
7.Surveys
8.A/B testing

I went in details in explaining the need and ways of tracking customers, who convert offline in our newsletter. I look forward to your valuable comments.

 

Add ..-> 6. Multivitrate Testing in your List also

 

Thank you graphseo, I would do that.

 

Something that we have used to good effect is a callback request form. A customer fills out a form to request a call within 5 minutes. This is easily tracked.

 

Great. I had phone tracking in mind but then I was thinking about it the other way round. Providing unique phone numbers for each campaign could be used to easily establish the link between a particular online campaign and offline sales. But yes we could also effectively do it by using call back request forms. Thank you Matt.

 

Offline conversion tracking sure does help in justifying your online marketing budget.