As a warning, there’s a lot in this post, and it builds as we go on – so depending on your experience some of it may feel like review. And to help bring this to life, we’ll also include a variety of examples. Here are some quick links if you want to jump around:

Let’s start fairly simple.

What Is Digital Tracking?

A business’ website exists to serve the business. A website is a powerful Marketing tool. It can be a powerful Sales tool. And, depending on the kind of Offer(s) you provide, your website can also drive your Fulfillment process.

If your business has a website you would be absolutely foolish to NOT have insight into what people are doing when they visit.

What pages they go to, from where, for how long, and what kinds of behaviors they take (opt-in, purchases, etc.) is objective data. That data is critical to helping you understand if your various efforts are working.

Digital tracking is how you collect this kind of website visitor data.

The de facto standard for digital tracking is Google Analytics. I use it, all my clients use it, Monkeypod uses it, and I would recommend you do too. The tool is free, built to handle more traffic than you will (likely) ever be able to amass, and lightweight so that your page load speeds are not slowed down by the data collection.

All you have to do is install a small tracking script into your website’s code.

How does Digital Tracking work?

he easiest way to think about it is to go back to kindergarten.

Remember when the teacher would pin a note to your shirt for your parents when you got home, because you were too little of a tyke to reliably share stuff? Digital tracking is like pinning a note to a link anytime you point it back to your website. You can pin up to five notes actually (see the next section).

Whether your link is in an email, from social media, in a direct mail piece, behind a QR code, behind a shortened link on a billboard…you can ALWAYS track from where your website visitors came. And IMHO you always should.

The magic is in the URLs themselves.

If you’ve ever paid attention to a link and noticed stuff like “utm_source=BP-05-2025” that’s like a little note being pinned to a link so the website operator can understand where that traffic came from.

Later, the website operator can go into Google Analytics and look for traffic that came from any sources with “BP-05-2025” and see what those specific visitors did.

How do I implement Digital Tracking?

Google Analytics allows you to “pin” up to five different utm parameters to any link so you can analyze the link’s performance:

1. Source – The highest level of tracking distinction. I recommend using the publishing source for this value (e.g. Facebook, Hulu, New York Times).
2. Medium – This is the next highest level of distinction and should be platform agnostic. For example, every Source above could have “ad” as the medium. You will be wise to note that when digging into Google Analytics data, you can view things by the Source/Medium pair of utm parameters. No other parameters have this kind of paired view.
3. Campaign – I recommend thinking about this as the main asset itself. For example, if I had a free report with various calls-to-action on different pages, I would set the Campaign as the name of the free report.
4. Term – This should reference the specific piece of the main asset where the link is actually found. Keeping with the free report example, I would set the Term as “pageX” where X is the specific page the link is found.
5. Content – This should be unique for every instance of the link. Even on a single page of a free report, there might be multiple instances of the same link. For example, the header and footer of each page might have the same call-to-action. In that case, the Content could be set to “header” and “footer”, respectively.

As you can imagine, in order to get meaningful and usable data, you want to be consistent with the parameters you use between marketing efforts because you can technically use anything you want. If you have a team, you must create some kind of document or spreadsheet that tells people what utms the business is using.

Over time with consistent utm schemas, your Google Analytics will form a rich tapestry of website visitor data that you can dive into for insights.

Can you help me visualize it…

Example 1: Tracking with CRM Emails

Anytime a blog post is published, I email our list about it. Usually more than once. To track the effectiveness of those email announcements, I have used this particular utm schema for years.

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If it helps to visualize with the pyramid, one blog post announcement email that links to the article via the featured image AND a text-based CTA can be thought of like this:

Example 2: A PDF With A Call-to-Action On Every Page

Imagine you have a 20 page PDF. Now, imagine the header and footer of every page has a call-to-action for people to visit a sales page on your website.

20 pages times two links per page is 40 links throughout the whole document.

If you want to Be Pro about things, you would ensure that every one of those calls-to-action is uniquely trackable via utms even though they all direct to the same destination.

The pyramid visual for the first two pages would look something like:

Example 3: Ad Campaign Tracking Swipes

Let me be as clear as I can: If you are doing any kind of Meta or Google advertising (or anywhere else for that matter), you absolutely 100% need to be using utms in an intentional way.

Anytime we run ads for ourselves or clients, we use the OAC Framework; Objective, Audience, and Creative.

In that case, the Source is always the ad platform and the Medium is always “ad”.

Then, the rest of the utms directly correlate to the OAC distinction:

• utm_campaign  is the name of the advertising campaign where the Objective is set.
• utm_term  is the name (or ID) of the Audience settings.
• utm_content  is the name of the specific Creative people see; the raw ad itself.

Using utms in this way allows you to directly analyze your paid efforts and do win-loss analysis much easier.

Here are the tracking parameters we use for various common platforms. You can literally copy/paste these into the appropriate places in the ad platform. If you need help with these please reply and let me know!

Google Ads:
{lpurl}?campaignid={campaignid}&adgroupid={adgroupid}&keyword={keyword}&device={device}&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=campaignId-{campaignid}&utm_term=adGroupId-{adgroupid}&utm_content={keyword}

*If you are advertising on YouTube, update the utm_source to be youtube

Bing Ads
{lpurl}?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign={CampaignId}-{Campaign}&utm_term={AdGroupId}-{AdGroup}&utm_content={TargetId}-{AdId}

Meta Ads
?utm_source=meta&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_term={{adset.name}}&utm_content={{ad.name}}+-+{{ad.id}}

LinkedIn Ads
?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign={{CAMPAIGN_GROUP_NAME}}&utm_term={{CAMPAIGN_NAME}}&utm_content={{CREATIVE_ID}}

So simple my Mom uses it…

My mom is a leading educator around medical simulation for nursing students. She has been teaching this stuff for well over a decade and has written a lot of articles on the topic. Every time she writes an article, she promotes it on LinkedIn because that is where she hangs out professionally online and networks with other professionals.

A few years ago, I encouraged her to start building her own list so that she would not be reliant on LinkedIn for getting the word out about new articles. The idea is simple: anytime she has a new article she publishes it and then emails her list about it to drive readership & conversation.

I helped her build a simple landing page for people to join her list, and then helped her build out a weekly chain of articles she had already published. Then after new subscribers make it through, they are all caught up and will be notified of new articles as they come out.

By now, she has nearly a full year’s worth of weekly articles. I’m super proud of her and a little jealous I haven’t done this for my own business. Classic cobbler’s kid problem #AmIRight?

Also, to Be Pro about it, I added proper Google Analytics tracking to the article links in each email.

For example: https://www.healthysimulation.com/52522/concept-mapping-healthcare-simulation/?utm_source=keap&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=kathy-sokol&utm_term=concept-mapping&utm_content=thumbnail

The extra utm_stuff after the “?” in the url are the tracking parameters for Google Analytics 🙂

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Hold On A Sec…That Isn’t The Schema Your JUST Shared Paul…

Pinning Little Urchins To Any Link

In case you were wondering why they are called “utm” parameters, there is a fun & short history lesson here.

The Google Analytics technology was not developed by Google. A company called Urchin was the original developer of a tool for this kind of website tracking. You installed their tracking script on your website and then appended the various parameters to the links you wanted to track. Those parameters were called Urchin Tracking Modules. UTM.

Google acquired the company in 2005 and turned it into Google Analytics. They chose to keep the same utm_source/medium/etc. parameters. The rest is history.

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Ok…I Can Seed The Tracking Data But How Do I Analyze It?

Another smart question.

Attaching those utms to links is great because that starts pushing the data YOU want to see inside Google Analytics. Looking at the data is a whole different kettle of fish. Mostly because there are SOOOO many ways to slice and dice the data that whole books have been written on the topic.

There is way more to cover about website traffic analysis than I would ever want to write about in a single post.

Fortunately, a few months ago on our bi-monthly Knights of Automation Mastermind, my friend Heather Wells and I spoke about this exact topic. The first part of the mastermind covers how utms work, which you’ve already learned about in this email. Starting about 15 mins into it I explain HOW to dig into the utm data.

What’d you think?

I know there was a lot here – so feel free to take your time and re-visit any sections that felt intimidating. I’m passionate about this topic because I know the difference it can make for business owners who want to take this seriously, and benefit from the insights it makes available.

Are you starting to now see how powerful digital tracking can be when done right? What questions do you have for me? Is there anything you’d like me to clarify?

No matter how big Be Pro grows, I plan to personally read and reply to all questions that come in for as long as I can. You can comment on this post, or reach out here if you have additional questions I can help with.

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Want more?

If you want to learn how to lay the groundwork and install digital tracking, I did a presentation for a WordPress conference showing how to install Google Analytics and some other tracking pixels (Facebook, Google Ads) using Google’s Tag Manager. Watch it here:

I used to spend a lot more of my time going to conferences. It is part of how I stay in the know on some of the latest trends and technologies. Lately, not so much.

But a couple weeks ago, I went back to my first in-person conference in almost three years and it reminded me why I have to do these things.

I found renewed motivation and excitement for what is going on in the industry.

I networked and talked with others who actually know what I do, understand my challenges, and can speak my language (My parents still think my job is made up…).

I have ideas flowing and my task list for my business, QBR, is growing.

So I wanted to share a few of the things I wrote down with you in case it sparks some ideas you need to jump on board with or get going for your business.

Trends

• Person focused– Just like me not being at a conference in several years, everyone is missing and craving some of the social and human interaction that is meaningful and real. The more you can add real human touch and emotion into your business, the more your audience can feel connected and relate to what you have going.

• Sales cycle is getting longer across the majority of industries. This means that people are still buying but they are taking longer to get to that decision. The best thing you can do for this is to make sure your customer journey is prepared for this.

  Is your message clear and consistent from start to finish? Do you have lots of value and nurture prepared in their journey? (Here’s a great course if you want to revisit the process of planning out your customer journey.)

• Flip the funnel– You will still bring people into your list with a free offer, but you can ask for your big sales quicker, but only from those who are really ready to buy. This means you have to know your audience well and know if they are ready to buy. More than ever, you need to ask a qualifying question up front to see if they are your ideal customer and in the right mindset to buy. If they are, start by offering your higher priced product and then go lower.

If they aren’t ready to buy right now, give them lots of value until they are ready instead of offering them lower priced products first.

Content

• Email is still not dead and even making a comeback. But like everything else, you have to make it human and personal again. People are looking for real human touch behind everything.

Talk to your people and ask them before sales what their biggest challenge is right now?

You can automate things like sorting questions

“Are you more focused on X or Y right now?”

But then use that info – you can tailor their follow-up automation with dynamic content, and be ready for them to reply. You will need a real human to be able to answer any emails they send to keep those conversations going.

Keep them talking by asking them questions like, “Are you interested in…, and “Can you tell me more about…”

• AI content is here, and only getting more powerful – honestly, it is pretty freaking cool. No, it isn’t perfect, but it can make writing go much faster if you are person who doesn’t love content, but you still need content.Blogs and videos should be feeding your content machines. It has never been a secret that content has been a big part of business but making sure you are using all the cogs (your website, blogs, social media, YouTube, Reels, all of it!) to work together to work as machine and interlinking everything is what keeps the business going.

  I know this can feel exhausting, but you don’t have to keep recreating new stuff. Find your pillar content and then repurpose it. And do it again and again.

  And use the technology out there to help you – like this one for Keap users.

Social Media

• Video is here to stay, so be your beautiful, weird self! (advice I still regularly give myself, btw)

Short videos and reels are one of the most popular and predicted items from almost every session I went to. This means that if you haven’t looked at reels and YouTube for your business, it might be time to take another look.

• You will always be rewarded for using new features by the platform algorithm, so don’t be afraid to jump on and try new things-even if they don’t last.
• PPC prices are increasing.
• Organic social is harder than ever, and to gain traction with it, you must post…A LOT. Just keep that in mind if this is the strategy you are looking at for growth.

Design a plan you can stick to – what channels will you use? How often will you post? What types of content can you produce? Then put together a calendar that helps you stay with it.

Getting consistent with social media is a challenge for me – and for most people. But fighting intertia to get started is the hardest part, and the benefit is that once you’re in motion, the platforms reward your regular engagement, which helps you sustain the momentum.

Connections

I’ll also add that one of the most valuable aspects of any conference is the ability to connect with people – either friends you already know (but mostly see online), or meeting new people, who may turn into meaningful long-term relationships.

This part of the conference is generally a little less predictable (there isn’t as much of a planned itinerary) but to me it’s just as valuable. Even as someone who is generally introverted, I find the social aspect recharges me, and the conversations are often just as rich and valuable as what happens in the actual event breakout sessions.

If you are looking to implement any of these or need support in your business, reach out or book a discovery call, and I would be happy to see if we can help take something off your plate.

I also want to encourage you to challenge yourself to invest in yourself and your business again, especially if it has been a while.

Get going on that project that has been on the back burner. Get in a room with others who inspire you. Make a move!

Recently I saw a thread on twitter from my friend Bernardo Feitosa where he dug into ‘cracking the engagement code’ for an online course he offers.

The Results: 5x more course participants engaged, and 16x more completed the course.

The thread covers how they did it – it was so valuable I asked him if I could turn it into this blog post – he said yes (obviously).

Note: If you want to see the original thread on Twitter you can do that here.

It all started with this masterful set-up:

Here are the following steps Bernardo outlined:

1. Commitment Form

1/ Commitment Form: If you want someone to do something, why not make them promise?

2. The Relentless Sequence

2/ The Relentless Sequence: There’s only ONE goal to this sequence: sign the commitment form.

I won’t show a single piece of content from the course before they commit to completing it. Getting this level of buy-in from every student was a game-changer.

3. The Magic Email

3/ The MAGIC email: “Is everything OK?” We’ve delivered emails over 10M times, and in all of that history, one email has the highest response rate ever… This is it:

3.5/ This “Magic” email is so good that every day I see new replies in our inbox, with customers saying how grateful they are that we’re following up.

4. SMS Reminders

4/ SMS Reminders Because our course is a daily challenge, we send daily SMS. For a regular course weekly might be better.

So it wouldn’t be annoying, we had people opt-in to these via the commitment form. 60% of all students say YES to daily SMS.

5. Lessons Learned

5/ Lessons I learned:

* It was worth it. Our upsell rate has doubled. Not doing that would have been leaving money on the table.

* Don’t be afraid to follow up. Clients actually appreciate it. You’re helping them.

* Keep it simple. Don’t overwhelm them with too many steps.

6. Why not a cohort?

6/ We have a high-ticket cohort based course with 90%+ completion rates. Cohorts are the best to maximize completion rates.

For this lower-ticket course, we needed the strategy to be evergreen.

7. What was the Tech Stack?

7/ Tech stack:

* All automation was done via Infusionsoft, SMS was integrated with PlusThisandTwilio

All could be done with other CRMs like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, etc.

* This course is on WP with Memberium but I also use Thinkific for cohort courses.

Other options: Teachable out of the box and AccessAlly by Nathalie Lussier for WordPress.

Want it done for you? A top notch consultant like Brian Keith can help you implement.

The difference between reacting and responding

What do you do when something goes wrong?

I’ll tell you what I do in a minute, but first, think about what you do.

Before you answer, think about how many times in a single day something goes wrong.

Maybe not terribly wrong, but from the unexpected, to the unbearable, how many times do things not go your way?

Probably a lot. And in business, the entire goal of your competition is to make things not go your way.

So in those moments, you have a choice of two things: you can react, or you can respond.

“Reacting” is what most people do most of the time.

It’s choosing to act on our initial impulses.

So we stomp our feet, throw our arms out, yell, roll our eyes, slump our shoulders, slam our laptop closed, or say something not so nice.

Those are reactions. When we react, we aren’t in control.

On the other hand, a “response” is a pre-decided choice.

It’s how we have decided we will act when something we’re already preparing for doesn’t go our way.

It’s deciding ahead of time that you’re going to encourage your sales rep after a dropped deal, huddle your team for the next month with confidence after a missed goal, hold your head up and face straight when you fumble an opportunity.

A response is the choice of leaders. A reaction is the impulse of a child (no matter how old we are).

So think about 3 things that are highly likely to go wrong this week. You know what they are. They are common mistakes that happen as a entrepreneur – lost deals. Missed deadlines.  Tech issues. Short cashflow.

(Why do we seem so surprised by these things when they happen all the time, anyway?)

And visualize how you want to respond to those scenarios. See yourself acting the way you would want yourself to act to have people respect you the way you want to be respected.

Now, pre-record that response in your brain, and when the time comes, and it will come, acknowledge your impulse to throw a fit, shout or yell, or slump your shoulders and feel sorry for yourself, and then choose to ignore your impulse and select your already-recorded response.

The response that makes you look like a real leader.

Because if you’re going to be a real leader, you have to act like a real leader which means you to have to prepare ahead of time to act like a leader when stuff goes wrong.

Think about it. Apply it this week and see how you feel and what it gets you.

Oh, I promised you I’d tell you what I do when something goes wrong. Well, as a leader of a lot of people, a lot of revenue and expenses, as well as my own family, I can tell you things don’t go the way I want every single day.

I do three things:

1. Prepare ahead of time for surprises so I’m not surprised.
2. If I need to be angry, or sad. I do it alone then get myself back together.
3. I project calm confidence. Then I prepare better to not let it happen again.

I hope that’s useful for you. If you try it out, I know it will be.