Guest contributor Mike Minard of Delta Media Group says:

I recently spotted an article on RE Technology about tracking marketing results and it got me thinking about one of the most powerful tools available to real estate professionals: Google Analytics. I'm going to take a moment to explain just how agents and brokers, in conjunction with their website developer, can use Google Analytics to market their services and listings more effectively.

What Can Google Analytics Tell Us?

Google Analytics can reveal things such as cost per lead, customer conversion rates, customer engagement rates and user behavior. For brokerages and agents that run banners or sponsor things, it also can be used to reveal the success of those efforts and empower the site owner with the information needed to make smart business decisions and get a true understanding of return on investment (ROI).

How We Use Google Analytics

I'm very familiar with the potential of Google Analytics because we use it regularly at Delta Media Group. Some of the key elements we leverage include:

• Conversion Goals - You need to set up conversion goals. Without conversion goals, you're blind in knowing how your customers are converting on your site. This is very revealing in showing you the sources of traffic that convert well and the sources that don't. Clearly, you'll want to focus more of your time and financial resources on the sources that convert.
• Goal Flow - This is a great visual representation of how converting customers flow through your site. While we are concerned with how customers flow through sites in general, we're very concerned with how, specifically, those customers that convert flow through the site. Paying attention to this can help increase conversion rates.