Tracking in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing refers to the process of marketing goods and services through online digital platforms such as social media and other links. The sole purpose of digital marketing is to provide promotion of brands through various digital entities. It is inevitable to appreciate the fact that digital marketing has evolved over the years with the presence of new inventions in technology. The future also looks brighter for digital marketers as new inventions take shape day by day. It has been postulated that approximately sixty percent of entrepreneurs who are not yet using digital marketing will use it shortly and it is inevitable for them to implement this. It is also postulated that current digital marketers will still hold their places in the market as this cannot be phased out. CITATION Clo18 \l 1033 (O'Brien) But the big question that will go begging is how to make the best out of it. What is the various mechanism of making sure that marketing is strategically implemented and applied to reap maximum benefits with very little resource utilization? Such an answer to that question will be the use of tracking and analytics. Tracking and analytics refer to the process of measuring campaign success during digital marketing in various ways. CITATION Phi18 \l 1033 (Frost). In this article, I will highlight the various tracking and analytics techniques used and how they can be implemented into an artist's album release or campaign.

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Affiliate tracking refers to one of the marketing mechanisms that involve other associated marketers linked to a particular website. They promote the sale of goods from the site and are only paid after the sale is made. It based on performance so ta say in other words. This factor of pay after the sale has made affiliate tracking to very cost effective. CITATION Arm18 \l 1033 (Roggio). This can be well integrated to an artist's album release through the same mechanism. An advertiser is brought on board where they agree with the marketer on the qualification of a successful purchase then they agree what percentage will be distributed to the marketer, distributor and finally what goes to the artist. Affiliate tracking poses numerous advantages over others types of tracking, and these include the following.

To begin with, it is cost-effective in the sense that you are not charged any amount of money until such a time when the affiliate has made you profit. It provides information for both parties at the table, so it enables you to track the operations of the affiliate regarding the number of sales they have made, after which you can make an analysis basing on the information relayed to you. Comparisons of information from both sides make computations even much more manageable. The software also allows you to manage your account effectively; it takes care of bookkeeping issues to do with the expenses, incomes, profits, and losses. Hence you can adjust strategies comfortably. It also provides more website exposure; this directly increases the traffic to your business's website. Link tracking, on the other hand, refers to the process of identifying the source of traffic in a given marketing website. A link is created and "linked" to a specific marketing modality such as a banner and many other links. So the moment a link is clicked on, it registers that specific tag it was given hence making it easier to establish what part of your marketing link is generating a lot of traffic. It reports the quality and effectiveness of the marketing tool used in the website. The tracking links can be coded to separately and not every link is tracked; only the links that are of interest are the ones who get tracked. CITATION Emi16 \l 1033 (Weisberg). Based on this information, link tracking can be useful and therefore be used in an album release because it can give information of how much and origin of the traffic that is: if it from the advertisement or social media accounts. This will, therefore, influence the decision on the best place to release the album. It is also important to track the performance after release.

Website analytics refers to the process of collection of data, reporting, and analysis of website data that demonstrate the usage of the website. When a website is created, there are goals and objectives that it aims at achieving; the perfect way to do so is to apply the website analytics. It provides an ideal ground for improving the customer experience while using the given website. It puts to use the key performance indicators as a parameter to measure the success or the failures of the website objectives. Web analytics as a process involves four basic steps that are used to create an adequate analysis. Step one usually consists of the gathering or collection of the raw data. It is typically a count of different parameters. The second step employed is the data processing step; this involves the conversion of data into information. The data is in the form of counts and ratios, but the primary goal is to convert data into information metrics. The third process is the development of key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs are then tethered to the various business strategies and is at this level that the conversions are analyzed. The final stage is the formulation of organization-specific strategies, goals, and objectives. These objectives will assess how best to save money, utilize the resources available effectively and widen the market share. CITATION Web18 \l 1033 (USA.gov).

UTM parameters (Urchin Tracking Module) these are tags added to a URL link such that when one clicks on these links, it sends information to Google analytics for tracking. It offers a great channel of identifying the URLs that are effective in generating or attracting traffic to the content you are providing. Although a practical way, it can be chaotic and redundant if not implemented and structured correctly. CITATION Nei18 \l 1033 (Patel). This can, therefore, be used to create a campaign and foundation for album release as it can disseminate information on the kind of traffic you want to follow the campaign. It enables you to know or gauge the traffic source that is if it of social media origin. The exciting part of these parameters is that it is very specific as it will give information origin in a more specific manner, a good example will be: the tagged URL can be from a social media platform such as Facebook account, this may generate generalized feedback of origin of traffic, but with the use of UTM, you can know the different components of Facebook that generated the traffic. It can tell you if the traffic came from just a post you made or even from referrals created.

Social media offers a big platform to promoting and connecting your business ideas and brand to your potential clients. Facebook has provided such platform for interaction and provides feedback on how you interact with your customers through the page. It makes you understand the type of content the audience wants, and it obligates you to provide such content. Facebook insight is the tool that has been provided by this social media platform, a question might be asked of how effective the platform is, and the answer is pretty much straightforward. Facebook holds a user base of approximately 1.4 billion users who are active daily and are heterogeneously spread all over the world. This is with no doubt a super incredible reach to an audience of your preference. The insights have been tailored explicitly with metrics that will focus your content to be well targeted. So it is safe to say it is a measure of the performance of the page. CITATION Bay18 \l 1033 (Seybolt). Just the same way as Facebook, Twitter is with no doubt a large social media platform that can be utilized to yield results in the field of marketing. The important thing again is to understand your audience, and they will interact well with the page. This is through the use of twitter analytics. CITATION Jef17 \l 1033 (Bullas). Album releases and campaign creation can thrive with the use of social media analytics options to generate traffic and also to understand the audience needs.

Email tracking is another platform for creating campaigns that will boost your marketing experience. You need to create an email marketing database which you will use to track the success. This can be achieved by tracking the parameters such the conversion rates, which means that someone's problem or objective was met after clicking through the email. Other parameters are the unsubscribe rate, click through rate and open rate. All this gauge the relevance you provide with your information. CITATION Sop18 \l 1033 (Elizabeth). There are other forms of tracking such as the use of QR codes, redirecting domains, direct traffic increase, and call tracking among others that can be used to achieve the same objectives as aforementioned. It is based on the fact that the tracking can be done online and offline. It has employed offline methods such as the use of tracking the estimated number of store visits. For example, Google creates a link specific to a given store, and it assesses it through the Google maps. It evaluates the conversations rate by analyzing the pay per click (PPC). So users with a smartphone and have the location settings available and are seen within the vicinity of the business entity that created the link is then monitored and a count is made when the user uses the link after having visited the store. Another commonly used mechanism is the use of the importation offline conversation rates which contain PPC links. How this works is basically by analyzing closed purchasing deals that have been made, this is then compared to the customer details that had been saved earlier on, and it will send feedback of the conversions to the appropriate campaign that was assigned to it. CITATION Ben15 \l 1033 (Davis).

References

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Davis, Ben. "11 ways to track online to offline conversions (and vice versa)." Econsultancy (2015).

Elizabeth, Sophie. "How to Track & Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns." Digital Marketing Institute (2018).

Frost, Phil. "9 Ways to Measure Digital Marketing Success." Mainsteet ROI (2018).

O'Brien, Clodagh. "The Evolution of Digital Marketing: 30 Years in the Past & Future." the-insider (2018).

Patel, Neil. "The Ultimate Guide to Using UTM Parameters." NEILPATEL (2018).

Roggio, Armando. "A Brief Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Ecommerce." PracticalEcommerce (2018).

Seybolt, Bayley. "A Beginner's Guide to Facebook Analytics." HootSuite (2018).

USA.gov. "Web Analytics Basics." usability.gov (2018).

Weisberg, Emily. "What is a Tracking Link or URL?" ThriveHive (2016).