You launched.
You set sales goals.
You pretty much reached them all.
You are happy beyond belief.
And you know that it means you can launch this course, this book, this thing you just launched…AGAIN.
If you want to get even better results on your next launch or turn a, you have to know why it rocked…
Knowing why it worked allows you to repeat the good.
Get rid of the bad.
And while I'm sitting here hoping you want to improve what already worked well, I bet if you didn't have such a great launch, you also want to know why it didn't work.
Am I right? Well – if you're anything like me, you don't want to guess.
And you shouldn't.
The best way to evaluate your launch is to look at the numbers, the data…because really these numbers tell you what happened.
But I get that for you it might not be at the top of your list to spend the day in your Google Analytics dashboard.
That's okay.
The simple answer to your problems – is to have at the very basic level good handle on where your sales, your traffic and people are finding you.
The easiest thing you can do to achieve this is by using unique shortened or trackable links wherever you're posting or sharing your launch related links.
Don't wait until the end of the launch to set up some simple tracking and analytics in order to see some simple metrics like – where did your customers come from, what % of your list purchased, what was the ROI on all that social media you did?
Tools To Track Your Progress
You know these tools, you have these tools – and you just need to use them strategically to have a basic level of stats.
Basic: Use a simple free Bit.ly, goo.gl
Both bit.ly and goo.gl are easy to use. You have probably seen one or both used by other people on social media and in video descriptions on YouTube. Choose one and use it consistently.
Use it for your main link that you share in email or the primary place you use your links.
Keep track of your bit.ly by adding a simple tag to it to bundle all your like links together–i.e. podcasts, launch content, videos, whatever you are sharing…pick a few tags and keep them together.
Now you're tracking what's happening from your email and can watch which links get clicks!
Intermediate: Make Pretty Links
Install the pretty link lite plugin to your WordPress site. I'm not sure if there's one for Squarespace or others, but I'm sure you'll be able to find something similar.
The plugin allows you to make multiple links to the same page…
name.com/scopes
name.com/instagram-whatevs
name.com/fb-whatevs
Again – make groups of like links.
Once you install the plugin, you'll see a menu in your WordPress Dashboard. Simply click on”groups” and either create your groups of related links.
For instance, set a group of up called “Social Media”. Make links for your a specific optin for each social media site. Post those pretty links on the appropriate social media site. Here are two I just created for Instagram and Periscope to track which site brings the most eyes into my site and that specific optin!
Now I'll be able to tell if either of these sites which aren't my big traffic sources are getting any clicks!
Not only that – it'll be easy for me to change the “destination link” where the specific social media link brings visitors or update it whenever you need to!
Advanced: Use Google URL Builder & Google Analytics
Now – I'm hoping you already have a Google Analytics account set up and configured on your blog…but when you're ready to dive in deeper and actually see conversions… you'll need to do a little bit more than just make trackable links.
Google URL builder is a free service that helps you create extremely useful links with details about when/where they were used and why.
When you're ready to get more detail on what links lead to, which launches they were used for, which ad or content campaigns they were part of…this is a great way to build custom links.
Read these posts first to get you started:
http://www.annesamoilov.com/is-your-business-growing/
http://www.annesamoilov.com/painlessly-track-google-analytics/
And then this quick video from my 30 Days Before Your Launch series (a blast from the past really) is a good reminder why it's so important to measure and track your website traffic sources:
Get Started Today
What's the first thing you can do to start tracking or improve the tracking of all those links you're sharing?
Leave a comment below and share what you will take action on today plus if you want to learn more ways to set your business for a smoother launch (maybe it's just around the corner!), check out my program Fearless Launching.
-Anne