Thinkific Purchase Conversion Tracking: GTM -> GA4, Google Ads +

The Client has courses on Thinkific and tried to setup up conversion tracking for their marketing.

They setup Google Ads Tracking on the Thinkific backend however, though they had Google Tag Manager (GTM) setup, they ran into difficulty setting up Reddit Ads conversion tracking using GTM.

They also did not know how to properly setup and use Google Analytics 4 to track and optimise their marketing. There were no UTMs setup so they could not tell where their traffic was coming from, especially in relation to ads.

Can't Tell What is Working and What is Not!

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is important in understanding which traffic sources are leading to course purchases. However, because UTM's were not in place nor purchase conversions being sent to GA4, the client could not tell what was working and what was not.

Seeing how customers came to the website can help determine areas in which to invest resources and reach the most customers.

For example, they were running Reddit ads, but could not tell if was leading to purchases or its effectiveness relative to Google Ads or Search!

Measurement Planning

We collaboratively created a Measurement Plan by focusing on:

The Results the website must achieve.

The behaviours that drives the results.

What information we need to measure to capture the behaviours.

What action should be taken given the values of what was measured.

Implementation

UTM Tracking

Google Analytics 4 Purchase tracking and more

Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Reddit Ads Conversion Tracking

Looker Studio Reporting

GA4 Reporting

Reporting

The reporting created focused on the following questions:

Where is Traffic Coming From?

Which Traffic Sources Are Leading to Conversions?

How Are Users Engaging With My Site?

Where is Traffic Coming From?

The video above uses this project to explain why UTMs are important.

I collaborated with the client to develop a UTM strategy and created a Google Sheet tool to generate the UTMs links for use in their marketing.

Which traffic sources are leading to conversions?

Above is a page from a Looker Studio Dashboard created for the project. We can see for the Time Series charts, that though they had Session data in GA4, there was no Purchase and Conversion data until it was implemented as part of the project in the middle of July 2023.

Conversion tracking was done by setting up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) events for purchases and sign-ups in Thinkifc. Theses events were used not only for GA4 but also to send conversions to marketing platforms such and Google Ads and Reddit Ads.

How Are Users Engaging With My Site?

Microsoft Clarity was setup using Google Tag Manager, which gives free Heatmaps & Session Recordings

Knowledge Transfer

I created videos for the client showing them how to use the Looker Studio dashboard, GA4 and Microsoft Clarity to answer the questions we outlined in the Measurement Plan.