Marketing is great, but if you can't measure your goals it's hard to tell what is working. Tracking conversions is a great way to analyze your marketing efforts. 

First, let's define what a conversion is.

According to Google, a conversion is "a completed activity, online or offline, that is important to the success of your business. Examples include a completed sign-up for your email newsletter (a Goal conversion) and a purchase (a transaction, sometimes called an Ecommerce conversion)."

Conversions can mean different things based on your business goals. If you are a service provider, your goal may be to get more calls. In that case, a mobile click-to-call would be a good conversion to track. Do you want users to download a recent white paper? A download would be a good conversion to track. Whatever you decide to track, Google Analytics can help you gather conversion data. 

So why does this matter?

One reason is to see which source of traffic delivers the best conversions. If you are putting a lot of time and money into a particular marketing effort, say social media, you want to make sure it is paying off. You can compare visits to the number of conversions to see your ROI. 

If you are starting up a new paid marketing campaign to get users to your website, tracking conversions can help determine if that campaign performed well. For example, if you set up a Google Ads campaign to target users who search for "air conditioning repair", you can drive those visitors to a landing page with a mobile click-to-call number. Your conversion goal could be to get those users to click on the phone number and call you. In some cases, you may be getting a lot of traffic from the paid source but no conversions. This could be an indicator that you need to adjust your paid campaign. 

Another cool thing about conversions is assigning values. If you know a new lead is worth $100, you can assign that conversion value to be $100. This is a quick way to view how much your conversions are worth and see which source of traffic is delivering you the most value. 

At the end of the day, defining and measuring conversions based on your business goals can be an important part of your overall marketing strategy.