How to Measure Your Visibility Return on Investment Using Google Analytics 4?

Using Sortlist to grow your agency gives you two options, which are complementary:

While it’s easy to track your ROI on the opportunity module (you invest in an opportunity, and either win the client or not), the same exercise can be harder for the visibility module.

How can you make sure the investments you make in your visibility are bringing a return to your agency?

We’ll answer this question in this article, by covering how to track Sortlist’s impact on your website’s traffic growth thanks to Google Analytics 4.

The first step, if you’re going to measure your visibility ROI, is to identify the traffic going from Sortlist to your website. In other words, how can you see how much traffic is going from Sortlist to your agency’s site?

To do so, Sortlist uses multiple parameters, called UTMs.

Typically, when a user browses our directories, stumbles upon your agency’s profile, and clicks on the CTA “visit website”, we don’t just send the user to your website.

The user arrives on your website, but does so with a specific URL containing multiple UTMs.

These UTMs allow to know 4 things:

Here is an example from HubSpot, illustrating how that URL can be structured:

At Sortlist, we use three UTMs to help you identify traffic going from our directories to your website:

Here is how it is displayed in a URL, using one of our member’s example:

In other words, here is the information we are sharing with you thanks to UTMs:

The second step to follow, to measure the amount of traffic you’re getting from Sortlist, is to head to your Google Analytics 4 account.

You’ll see 4 different options:

Head to “Reports”, in which you’ll find 4 options again:

“Acquisition” is the one that should attract your attention.

You can either click on:

Traffic acquisition is the one that interests us, as user acquisition only takes into account new users going to your website. It’s therefore restricted, and reflects less the reality of your traffic.

So we want to analyse the traffic acquisition report, in which you’ll find all your traffic sources by clicking on the “session source” filter.

You can have multiple sources, such as:

Getting there, you can identify traffic coming from Sortlist in three different ways.

The most straightforward way to do it is to search for Sortlist, and GA4 will show you the traffic your website is receiving, thanks to our UTMs.

Direct traffic is not only made up of people typing your URL in the Google search bar and arriving on your website. It’s actually made up of multiple sources of traffic which cannot be precisely identified by Google Analytics.

In other words, if Google Analytics cannot identify a traffic source, it will categorize all this traffic as “Direct traffic”. It’s the by default choice when traffic comes to your website, and Google Analytics cannot identity where it comes from.

It is possible that your traffic coming from Sortlist gets categorized as “Direct traffic” by Google Analytics, shall any issue happen with our UTMs. Such an issue can happen, as Sortlist is an evolving company and we bring changes to improve our product on a regular basis.

In other words, watch out for your direct traffic. If you see an increase, which is correlated with your visibility investments, it might just be users clicking on your profile and going from our platform to your website.

Finally, third way to identify traffic coming from Sortlist: look out for increases in your organic search.

Some users can bump into your agency’s profile on Sortlist, but not visit your website right away. They might Google your agency’s name instead, make some research, and then head to your website.

We cannot measure that. We cannot measure exactly how many people see your agency’s profile and then go to your website through another channel than Sortlist. If they don’t click on the “Visit website” CTA, visible on your profile, we can’t keep track of it.

The only way is to look out for your organic search, and see if there is an increase when you increase your visibility investments.

You can also make comparisons between two time frames, directly on GA4, by clicking in the upper right corner:

You’ll then be able to see how your traffic is evolving from one period to the next.

That’s for the traffic. But how can you know what your traffic is doing? And does it actually bring in new business opportunities?

That’s where events and conversions come into play.

Creating events and conversions is important, as it allows you to estimate the value of your traffic. 100 people coming to your website doing nothing is not as valuable as 100 people coming to your website and filling a contact form or subscribing to your newsletter.

It’s important to be able to keep track of such events, as it’s the only way to know what your traffic is worth and therefore estimate your return on investment.

So how can you know which actions did users coming from a certain traffic source took on your website?

First, we need to remind the difference between an event and a conversion:

In both cases, you get to define which events and conversions you want to track on your website. It depends on what you feel is important and what you optimize your website for.

To create an event, you can use Google Analytics 4:

Or, second option, you can use Google Tag Manager:

Once your events and conversions are all set, you’ll be able to track them in your traffic acquisition report, in the right column:

You can select all conversions or specific conversions as well by clicking on it.

The more conversions you get, the more worth you’re getting from your traffic, and the easier it is to asses your ROI.

Investing in your visibility and generating traffic is a great way to grow your agency. However, it’s important to avoid the “leaking bucket” effect, meaning attracting traffic to your website but not converting it.

This can happen if a website is not optimized, doesn’t offer a good experience, or doesn’t have a clear value proposition.

Google Analytics 4 can help you know where your traffic is dropping off, which can help you identity the points that need some improvements to boost your conversion rate and therefore improve your return on investment.

Any questions? Feel free to contact us via the chat, we’d be happy to discuss them with you!