What is the best way to track success for an online advertising campaign?

[Anonymous]

I would like to create an event in which I can track the success of a online banner ad. The success would be the capture of the lead data. A lead clicks the banner ad which brings them to the Marketo landing page, completes a form on the page, and a confirmation email is sent out. Is there a way to set this up in Marketo using an event? We currently do not have an event for online advertising, can we create custom events?

Thanks in advance.

Mark

[Anonymous]

We would generally suggest making a custom channel for that use case. You can define your own success metric for that new channel. Here's how you would go about doing that: Create a Program Channel - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

I would suggest creating this using the Default program type with just one status (1 Engaged - Success) and marking that as the success step, since everyone who enters that program will be known at the success stage when they fill out the form.

[Anonymous]

Hey Mark Feegrade​! Like Kristen mentioned, you can create an "Online Advertising" channel program. From there, you can create a program that listens for this particular banner ad. Set up your Online Ad program in Marketo, then create a Smart Campaign that looks for Trigger - fills out form, with a Referrer constraint:

We use utm parameters, but you can select what works for yours. Then in the flow step, you say Change Program Status > Engaged/Converted, like Kristen mentions. And there you have it!

Let me know if this makes sense!

[Anonymous]

Hi Allison, this is very helpful, thanks. I have a few questions:

1. I can't see what you posted as your referrer constraint--can you share that again?
2. Do I need to set up tracking code in Google analytics or will I get the analytics I need from Marketo?
3. We have a digital ad campaign that will have a corresponding print ad. We'd like to track the vanity URL separately from clicking directly from the ad. Any thoughts on how we'll know if they clicked through the ad vs typed in the vanity URL directly? I'm thinking I should set up a separate program or smart campaign just for that.

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

Pia Simeoni​ Sorry, hmm, I wonder where my screenshot went!!

Just put referrer contains campaign=xyz, or whatever tracking you are pushing through from your ad (does that help?)

I'd recommend setting up tracking in both at first.. there are benefits to both. See what you end up reporting on and what questions people have, and then see what sticks. The benefits of GA is that it's easy to scale, and the numbers will be the most accurate. The benefits of Marketo is you get to see the actual leads, and you can use the campaign in your attribution tracking in Marketo/SFDC/3rd party vendor.

With Marketo, you can set up a program to track visitors, but you won't be able to add them to a program if they are anonymous.

For the vanity URL, I would put into place different referrer tracking, and treat it as a separate campaign. Then you can track the two different channels.