URL tracking on offline material

[Paul78]

Hi there,

Hope someone can give some advice.

We are doing some magazine advertising, the main purpose of the advert is to promote one of our new products, however the URL goes something like this:

http://www.domain.com/products/new-product-libra-furniture/ which is just too long for anyone to remember, I think it should be simply domain.com/libra which redirects to the product page, however how can I track this in Google Analytics? if using a 301 that's impossible?

Any advice would be grateful.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Gary,

Has your question been answered? You've received some stellar responses in this thread!

Christy

[Christy-Correll]

I agree! And thanks for reminding the community about to award great answers with the "Helpful Answer" status, Paul!

[ThompsonPaul]

The level of thought and comprehensiveness Jason has put into each of these replies is really impressive! Such great answers around each of these specific issues. Gotta agree with him on each one.

Nicely done, IMO.

Paul

P.S. Gary, when you feel the question's been fully answered, don't forget to mark the most useful responses with "Helpful Answer" status. You got some great info here and it's a great way to reward the folks who helped most.

[Paul78]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for you detailed reply.

The conversion will be for the consumer to enter a give-away on a new product we are soon to launch, which is exclusive to a particular magazine.

Yes, prints ads will be a primary ongoing marketing vehicle which will be promoting the same product but in different magazines however using different CTAs so I will have to create various landing pages for this, maybe this could be an issue in the near future?

Thanks

[retailgeek]

Great question.  I debated suggesting that your just keep all those landing pages out of the index, but I don't know enough about your content/use-case to make a suggestion.

What's the conversion action you are trying to achieve?  Are you selling a product or service right on the landing page, or are you sending them to a Product Detail page to make a purchase?

The challenge is that, you might have users see your magazine ad, and then later try to find you with "Cool thing I saw in Time Magazine"

You have to balance a number of factors:

1. Are print ads a primary and ongoing marketing vehicle for you.  So you'll have an ever growing inventory of publication specific landing pages.

2. Do you get a lot of search volume that would convert better if it went to a non-publication specific landing page.

3. Is there a high converting canonical non-pub specific version of all the content that will exist on the pub specific landing page?

4.  What is your sales cycle?  Are you a low-consideration product that a prospect will buy shortly after consuming your landing page content, or will a prospect make numerous visits to your site, and consume dozens of pages of content before making a purchase?

Part of the fun of what we all do for a living is that every circumstance is different

[Paul78]

Thanks Jason.

Would you not use a noindex tag on the page instead of rel=canonical?

[retailgeek]

Yep, if you're willing to set up a separate landing page for each Ad/Campaign, then by all means do that.  Then you can assume all direct traffic on the URL is the campaign traffic.

That would also let you customize each landing page for the publication, which will improve your relevancy and reduce your bounce rate.  I.E.  If www.mysite.com/life has an image with the cover of the actual edition of Life magazine I saw your ad in, then I know I'm in the right place.

As you mentioned, if the content of many landing page is basically the same, then make sure you use rel="canonical" tags to consolidate your link juice.

My suggestion to use vanity urls linking to a landing page with campagin codes, would be if you wanted a single landing page to serve multiple campaigns (or other sources of traffic).

[Paul78]

Hi All,

Thanks for all your feedback so far.

I don't think I will use a URL shortener, not memorable enough.

QR Code, not quite right for the audience.

Regarding:

www.mysite.com/Life

Then set up a redirect for that URL that redirect to a landing page with a campaign code:

http://www.mysite.com/landing?utm_source=Life&utm_medium=Magazine&utm_campaign=Great

Why don't I just use www.mysite.com/Life as the landing page which replicates the original product page and put a noindex on the page or a canonical?

What do you think?

[retailgeek]

Create a short vanity URL to put in the magazine (i.e. Life Magazine).

www.mysite.com/Life

Then set up a redirect for that URL that redirect to a landing page with a campaign code:

http://www.mysite.com/landing?utm_source=Life&utm_medium=Magazine&utm_campaign=Great

Now you have a campaign in GA you can track.

Alternatively, (as others have suggested) you can use a URL shortener:

bit.ly/adsf72 -> http://www.mysite.com/landing?utm_source=Life&utm_medium=Magazine&utm_campaign=Great

The shortener gives you a short url and an extra layer of tracking, but the short url will be less meaningful or memorable (unless you do a completely custom one).

If you want to go with a QRCode, do it in addition to (not instead of) printing, the short URL.

Use the shortest URL possible in the QRCode because short URL's = lower density QR Codes that are easier to scan.

[TakeshiYoung]

A 301 redirect or something like bitly should work.

[TommyTan]

Hi Gary,

You can use Google's URL shortener to manage your campaigns and then set up Custom Segment and view it in the report in Google Analytics.  I know this works for Social Media and Email campaigns but not sure about offline campaigns.  http://www.mktdojo.com/how-to-track-email-and-social-media-campaigns-with-google-analytics

Another way I guess is to use bit.ly, when you shorten a link, they provide stats to track the number of people clicking on the link.  Once again, I know it works for Social Media campaigns but not sure about offline.

Finally, you can try using QR codes.  QR Codes are widely used in off line campaigns or events.  Readers don't have to memorize the link and enter it in the url, they can simply scan it with their phone.  Furthermore, you can use either method mentioned above and create a QR code with it so that you can track the number of visits.

Why create a custom link and use it for the QR Code instead of your original link?  If you are using the custom link for the QR code, then you know that if you have visits via the custom link, they are definitely from scanning the QR code.

Hope this helps!