Measure before you market

A new site or online store goes live. The agency launches campaigns. Three months later, someone asks the obvious question: which of this is actually working? Nobody can answer with confidence.

This is not a marketing failure. It is a foundation problem. The site was built to look right and work, but not to be measured, and the ad platforms were connected late, if at all.

Why campaigns run blind

Three gaps are behind most of the cases we see.

• Nobody agreed what to measure. Key actions, such as a quote request, a parts search, a download or an order, were never defined, so they were never tracked consistently.
• Product data never reaches the ad platforms. The catalogue lives in the store, but shopping ads and retargeting need it in a feed. Without one, customers searching for a part never see your offer.
• Agency and IT work from different numbers. The agency reports clicks from the ad platform. IT reports traffic from the server. Sales reports orders from another system. Nobody can link them.

Foundations first

In the platforms we build and run, we put four foundations in place before significant money goes into media.

1. Decide the questions marketing needs answered

Start with the business questions, not the tools. Which channels bring buyers who order? Which products are viewed but not bought? Where do visitors drop out? These questions decide which events need to be tracked and how they should be named.

2. Implement analytics, tag management and consent properly

We set up analytics and a tag manager from launch, with a defined list of events and a consent banner that respects visitors’ choices. On a family of regional brand websites we run, this is part of the template, so every new site is measurable from its first day rather than months later.

3. Connect product feeds and ad-platform audiences

On a regional commerce platform we run for distributors, the first distributor store was connected to Meta Pixel for Facebook and Instagram and to Google Merchant Center for shopping ads. Product views and baskets could then feed retargeting, and products could appear when customers searched for them.

Together with page-speed work and a relaunch, the store grew from under 100 visitors a day to around 10,000.

4. Report from visit to order in one place

Clicks are not the goal. The aim is a report that follows the path from campaign to visit to enquiry or order, in a dashboard the business can act on. That is what turns the monthly agency review from a discussion about impressions into a discussion about sales.

Working with your agency

Most companies already work with an agency, and they should keep doing so. Agencies are good at creative work, media buying and running campaigns. What they usually cannot do is change the site, the product feed or the data model.

That is the gap we fill. In the commerce example, we worked alongside the local distributor’s marketing agency: we provided the tracking, the feeds and the audiences, and kept the technology running behind their campaigns. The agency could focus on marketing, and both sides worked from the same numbers.

Where to start

Before the next campaign, list the five business questions you most want answered, and check whether your site can answer them today. If it cannot, fixing the foundations will usually do more for results than any increase in media spend.

If you can’t tell which campaigns drive sales, tell us about it.