In my last article (read it here), I went into more detail on the actions you can take to get ready for the upcoming changes with Facebook and iOS 14. Today’s article is more about you. It’s about making sure your business is compliant while protecting your business: privacy and business health.
Here’s the thing, you don’t own Facebook, it is simply one of the tools you use to grow our businesses. You don’t own Google or YouTube or Instagram or Pinterest…or any other social platform.
Maybe you own a little stock in one or some of these, but you don’t own the company, and you’re likely not a C-Suite executive there.
This is the point…you do not have the power to change the policies of these companies. So, you have to adapt to these changes.
Your primary focus during these times of change is to be compliant for privacy and have business health, including revenue, profits, clients, etc.
So, let’s get to that, shall we?
Privacy and Business Health: Multi-Platform Tracking
The key here is Multi-Platform Tracking. I’m not saying you need to go out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on tracking software.
I am saying, you better know your numbers and know you can trust them. This is the #1 key to the long-term health and viability of your business.
Let’s say you’re running ads on both Facebook & Instagram, and some Google Ads.
You’ll track those ads in the respective Ads Management platforms. Then, you’ll track the results in your shopping cart or funnel platform. And you’ll track with analytics.
Plain and simple, if you are not using Google Analytics, now is the time to set it up and get some optics from another angle with it. Google Analytics is free. With it you can see a lot of things about your business, traffic, funnel performance and which content your visitors like most.
No need to overcomplicate things, set up your domain, prove you own it, and put the code on your site. Let it do its thing for a few weeks, then go in and set up more details.
Don’t have much website traffic yet? That’s okay, collect the data anyway.
You see, Google embraced the idea of privacy first a few years back. So, many web geeky insiders believe they are in a much better position than some social media ad competitors moving forward.
This means your Google Analytics tracking is already compliant with most of the coming changes.
The addition of Google Analytics helps you track on multiple platforms: the ad manager platforms, your shopping cart or funnel platforms, and Google Analytics.
Layering the data from these multiple sources will help you get a more complete picture of how marketing campaigns effectiveness.
Privacy and Business Health: Funnel Isolation
This one is for those running at least $500-$1,000 a day in ad spend to one funnel with multiple traffic sources.
Let’s say you have traffic from Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Google Ads. You’ll want to know which platform is producing the best results in your business, right?
One way you can do this is to duplicate your landing pages or funnels, and send different traffic sources to different landing pages.
Now, this is tedious stuff, and you need to have a spreadsheet to keep them all straight, but it is one way to kind of bypass the stress of accurate tracking data.
Again, this is one that I only recommend for someone running a lot of paid traffic to a single offer or funnel.
And, if your analytics is properly set up, you may not need to resort to this.
Privacy and Business Health: Use UTM Tracking
Maybe you learned about UTMs when you first started creating content online. Then you set it aside because it seemed confusing or tedious. Eventually, you forgot all about it.
Now’s your chance to come back to it. So, what are UTMs exactly?
UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module) help you identify which campaigns are producing results. They are the snippets of text added to the end of your actual URL, that follow your link around the web.
Here’s an example of a final URL to this post from a Facebook ad:
https://marketingprofitschool.com/privacy-and-your-business-health/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=%ad.name%&utm_content=%adset.name%&utm_campaign=%campaign.name%
This particular version uses dynamic fields to auto-populate the Campaign Name, Ad Set Name, and Ad Name. This requires some discipline in your naming conventions, but it is worth it. You can also set up dynamic fields for using the numerical value for Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads.
It has to be one of those things that you create a habit around. And it’s not appropriate for every single link you share.
You don’t want those LONG urls shared in the body of a social post, right? This is one reason you see a lot of people using link shorteners on their posts.
You can put the full URL into the ‘final destination URL’ when you create a bit.ly link, for example. Also, many social sharing platforms have their own link shorteners, like ow.ly from Hootsuite.
Still confused about using UTMs? This article from Neil Patel does a great job of laying it all out.
NOTE: It is acceptable to include shortened links in the body or text of your social posts. However, the ‘final URL’ or ‘target link’ for a full post or an ad must include the entire URL and completely match what visitors see on the actual landing page. Using shortened links or redirects is a major cause of ad disapproval on every platform I’ve used.
Here is a recent video on these topics for a different angle:
Privacy and Business Health: Conclusion
In conclusion, don’t worry about the coming changes and compliance. Make a few adjustments now, and you’ll be in good shape for a long time to come.
Track Your Campaigns and Know Your Numbers. If you only do these two things, you almost can’t help but succeed.
If you only set up your Google Analytics tracking and use UTMs in your paid campaigns, it will make a huge difference for your business. This makes decisions so much simpler – no more guessing.
Privacy and business health can co-exist, you just need to make a few tweaks to your tracking and processes to improve your optics.
The biggest take-away?
This is just the tip of the iceberg as they say. So, what’s most important is that you keep making content your audience wants to consume.
This helps you to keep building your warm audiences and email list. Warm Audiences and Email Lists help you avoid many of the perils that are causing concern with the current and coming changes.
I hope you’ve found this article helpful, and that you can use some of these suggestions in your business. My primary goal is to help you keep getting better and better results.
I love connecting with other entrepreneurs. Connect with me on socials @MarketingProfitSchool or @PennyKelley. Feeling generous? Share this article with someone it will help.
