Conversion tracking is a method used in digital marketing that allows marketers to understand how users interact with their advertisements, website, or app, and how these interactions lead to valuable actions or ‘conversions’.
A conversion is a specific action that you want users to take after they engage with your digital properties, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, downloading an app, etc.
In the context of online advertising, you might set a conversion event to be a user clicking on an ad and then making a purchase on your site. In this case, each purchase made after clicking the ad would be tracked as a conversion.
Here’s how conversion tracking generally works:
- Setup: You place a piece of code, often called a conversion tracking pixel or tag, on the page where the conversion action is completed, such as the order confirmation page that users see after making a purchase.
- Tracking: When a user clicks on your ad and then completes the conversion action on your site, the tracking pixel is triggered and records the action as a conversion.
- Analysis: The data about these conversions is then sent back to your advertising platform, where you can analyze it to understand which ads, keywords, or audiences are leading to the most conversions.
Conversion tracking helps marketers to understand the effectiveness of their campaigns, optimize their marketing efforts, and achieve a better return on investment. It’s an essential tool in the digital marketer’s toolkit, and is supported by most major advertising platforms, including Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and many others.