If you’ve followed the action step in Part 1, you now have Google Analytics on your website.
And if you’ve taken a look at your analytics, you’ll see something like this:
Ignore ALL this right now.
We will make sense of it once we’ve created goals for your website. And we’ll so with Goal tracking.
What is Goal Tracking?
Goal tracking is a feature within Google Analytics.
You set “goals” for your consulting website. Doing so allows you to measure how well your website fulfills these goals.
Your analytics are nothing more than a glorified hit counter until you set goals for your website.
There are 4 types of goals:
These are the technical types of goals you can create with Google Analytics.
But before you can use those, you’ll need to determine this:
What are your marketing goals for your consulting website?
I’m going to assume that as a consultant, you’d like your website to generate more business.
To that end, your consulting website must serve as a lead-generation asset.
A lead is a potential client. A percentage of your leads turn into paying clients.
That’s how you leverage your website to win more business — by attracting leads.
You must know the answers to these questions:
- How much money do you want to make in your consulting business per year?
- How many clients would it take per year to generate that much income?
- How much would your average project have to be?
- How many leads would you have to generate, and what percentage would you have to convert them into clients?
Take time to answer them. Doing so will put your website in alignment with your goals. And you’ll know what your website has to do to help you achieve them.
(I wrote a chapter on this in my book, Productize Yourself, which will guide you through this process — read it for free here: Setting Your Income Goal)
EXAMPLE:
Joanna wants to make $200K in her first year as a solo consultant. Her average project is ~$30K.
Here’s a breakdown of the numbers:
Annual income goal: $200,000
Average project: $30,000
Clients needed: 6.667
Website conversion rate: 0.5%
Website visitors needed (per month): 555
Website visitors needed (per week): 139
Website visitors needed (per day): 19
Sales call conversion rate: 20%
Consultations needed per month: 2.778
Consultations needed (per week): 0.694
Consultations needed (per day): 0.093
With a 0.5% conversion rate of website visitors to consultations, she needs 555 visitors per month to reach her income goal.
Goal tracking is what enables your website to track these conversions from within Google Analytics.
Two Types of Goal Tracking For Consultants
If you want to turn your consulting website from a brochure to a lead-generator, it’s going to need two features:
- Consultation scheduling
- Email Opt-ins
When your website does these two things, it’s growing your audience. It’s working to build your network and your client pipeline.
Consultation Scheduling
You need consultations in order to turn leads into clients. Your consulting website should help you get these consultations.
Don’t default to a general contact form where you let anyone message you anything. Instead, use consultation scheduling software like Calendly to streamline the process.
Email Opt-Ins
Very few of your website visitors are ready for a consultation right away. A much higher percentage is open to working with you in the future once you’ve provided enough value — and the timing is right.
When you use your website to build your email list, it’s building your audience. These are potential clients who are giving you permission to follow up with them.
Action Step 1: Write Down Your Goal
If you haven’t already, go through the steps in Setting Your Income Goal.
Now you know how many clients you need, how many consultations you need, and how many website visitors you need to reach your income goal.
Action Step 2: Build The Right Pages/Features On Your Website
Remember, your website is a vehicle to help you reach your income goal. But, to do so, it must lead to conversations with buyers.
That means consultations straight from your website (the front-end), and consultations coming from your email list (the back-end).
For capturing free consultations, I recommend you use Calendly.
For building your email list, I recommend ActiveCampaign to host your email list and OptinMonster to power your website opt-ins.
Action Step 3: Set Up Goal Tracking
First, you’ll create your goal for free consultations. This will help you track what percentage of the visitors on your website book a free consultation.
If you’re using Calendly, it comes with a native integration for GA goal tracking — meaning you can set it up by clicking a button and simply linking your account.
If you’re not using Calendly, check if the software you’re using has specific instructions for Google Analytics and goal tracking, and follow those instructions.
If they don’t have instructions, you can default to creating a destination goal.
Most free consultation software will allow you to re-direct your lead to a specific page once they’ve filled out your consultation form.
Re-direct your prospect to a “Success” page that confirms their consultation with you. On this page, you can also instruct them on how to prepare for the consultation.
Then, create your goal in Google Analytics. Here’s how to do that:
(Imagery courtesy of Mighty Citizen)
Step 1: Click on the “Admin” icon in Google Analytics.
Step 2: Select “Goals” in the View column.
Step 3: Select “Custom” at the bottom, and click continue.
Step 4: Name the goal with descriptive language, like ‘Free Consultation.’
Step 5: Select “Destination” as the type of goal, and continue.
Step 6: Insert your destination URL(EX: /consultation-success)
Step 7: Click save.
That’s it!
Now, you’ll be able to track how your website funnels website visitors into free consultations.
Also, check out Mimiran for more advanced goal tracking — made specifically for Consulting websites.
You’ve taken a major step in turning it from a brochure to a marketing asset. What gets measured gets managed.
Second, you’ll create a goal for your email list. This will help you track what percentage of your visitors sign up to your list.
To do so, follow the exact same steps above — but create a separate “Success” page strictly for your new email list subscribers.
On this page, prompt your new subscriber to check their inbox and confirm their subscription. If you have a lead-magnet, you can include it on this page.
Follow the 8 steps above, but name the goal “Email Opt-In”, and make sure the destination URL is for your opt-in success page (EX: /optin-success) and not your consultation success page.
Now that you’ve created your goals, you can start to make sense of — and apply — all of that information inside your Google Analytics.
And instead of it being a hit counter, we can use it to improve your consulting website’s performance.
In Part 3, we’ll set up your consulting website dashboard. That way, you can view your website’s KPIs and find actionable data in seconds.