Measuring your marketing return on investment can often be a difficult task for home builders. It can be tough to pull helpful, quantitative data out of internet marketing campaigns. This is often the case for home builders even if these campaigns are effective in attracting potential home buyers. The amount of information available in Google Analytics can seem overwhelming to those who aren’t familiar with it. However, these tips will provide you with a good base of knowledge to measure your home building company’s ROI using Analytics.
Gain a Clear Snapshot of Your Efforts with “Channels”
Before home builders can gain any insight into the effectiveness of their internet marketing campaign, it is crucial to first get an idea of where their various web traffic is coming from. Clicking “acquisition” then “channels” in Analytics will give the user the perfect snapshot of their current marketing efforts. It is nice to see how your active internet marketing campaign is performing, but simply looking at current statistics is not enough. The true value of the “Channels” portion of Google Analytics stems from its ability to easily compare current data with that of other time periods. To gain a clear perspective of your current internet marketing campaign, set your time periods accordingly. Simply change the dates of data shown to mirror the time in which you changed your home building marketing tactics.
Utilize Conversion Goals
Do you have a pretty good idea of how many conversions it would take to make one of your landing pages successful? Maybe you simply want to know how many people are visiting your landing page or you have an inquiry on your website asking potential home buyers which types of homes they may be interested in. These are questions that can be answered using the “Goals” tool under the “Conversions” tab. Keep in mind when setting your home building company’s goals that they should be in line with the goals for that particular campaign. If the goal of a campaign was to drive traffic to your list of homes, then set your goal conversion in a manner that will show that. Click here if you are curious about how to set up, edit, and share your company’s goals.
Analyze Page Effectiveness
Better understand which pages on your home building website are effective by clicking “Behavior,” “Site Content,” and “All Pages.” This portion of Google Analytics will allow you to see how your different pages stack up against each other. This tool is a great way to see what types of home builder blog posts get the most traffic. If you recognize a blog topic or theme that has seen success, be sure to create similar blog posts in the future. For example, it may be apparent that potential home buyers are very interested in blogs that explain the benefits of different floor plans. In that case, you would want to create more posts about the pros and cons of various plans.
Improve Link Trackability with the URL Builder
Using Analytics’ URL builder will allow you to add custom parameters to your URLs. The custom parameters will give those links a unique identity that will allow them to be tracked automatically through your Google Analytics account. For example, if you have an email campaign with certain links within individual emails, the URL Builder will allow you to know exactly how many visits your pages are receiving from those individual links. Use the URL builder to your home building company’s advantage. It will allow you to more easily measure the effectiveness of your various marketing content.
View Real Time Site Statistics
Quite possibly the most entertaining portion of Google Analytics is the “Real Time” “Overview” page. This page will allow you to see, in real time, where your web site visitors are from, which pages of your website they are on, and how long those individual page views last. The live information will let you quickly understand just how effective your internet marketing efforts are. Viewing this page will enable your home building company to cater to the types of potential home buyers visiting your web site. For example, if you notice that many of your visitors are looking at pages regarding coastal homes, it would probably be a good idea to write blogs about what types of homes can handle the coastal environment. Enjoy the “Real Time” tool as it can be both rewarding and effective!
These tips will put your home building company on its way to getting the most out of every dollar it invests into an internet marketing campaign. Become a student of Google Analytics. It will help you better serve your potential home buyers by giving them the information they need!
