Understanding Google Analytics: Tracking the Success of Your Funeral Home’s Campaigns

For funeral homes, running digital marketing campaigns can help reach families in your community, provide valuable services, and grow client base. But how do you know if those campaigns are actually driving results? That’s where Google Analytics plays a crucial role.

Understanding Google Analytics helps track website performance, evaluate marketing campaigns, and make data-driven improvements to your funeral home’s online presence.

This blog breaks down the key features of Google Analytics and how you can use them to track the success of your funeral home’s marketing campaigns.

1. What is Google Analytics and Why Does It Matter?

Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks and analyzes website traffic and user behavior. For funeral homes, it offers insights into how families interact with your site, which marketing channels drive the most traffic, and how well your site converts visitors into leads.

Here’s why using Google Analytics is essential for funeral homes:

• Track Campaign Performance: Whether you’re running Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or email campaigns, Google Analytics helps you measure which marketing efforts are delivering the best results.
• Understand Your Audience: Analytics allows you to gather demographic information about your website visitors, such as their age, location, and devices used. This data helps you tailor your marketing to the right audience.
• Measure Website Engagement: Google Analytics tracks how long visitors stay on your website, which pages they visit, and whether they take action (such as filling out a contact form or calling your funeral home).
• Optimize for Conversions: By monitoring key metrics like bounce rate and conversion rate, you can identify areas of your website that may need improvement to better serve families and increase inquiries.

Bonus Tip: If you haven’t already, make sure your website is connected to Google Analytics by installing the tracking code provided when you sign up for the service. This will allow you to start gathering data right away.

2. Key Metrics to Monitor for Funeral Home Campaigns

Google Analytics provides extensive data, but it can be overwhelming without a clear focus. By focusing on a few key metrics, you can gain valuable insights into how your marketing campaigns are performing and where improvements can be made.

Website Traffic

• Sessions: A session represents a single visit to your website. Tracking session counts helps measure website traffic over time.
• Users: The number of unique visitors to your website. Tracking users gives you an idea of how many different people are engaging with your funeral home online.
• Traffic Sources: Google Analytics shows you where your website traffic is coming from. Common traffic sources include organic search (people finding your site via search engines), direct traffic (typing your URL directly), social media, and paid ads.

Engagement Metrics

• Bounce Rate: This metric shows the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate could indicate that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for or that your website isn’t optimized for a great user experience.
• Pages Per Session: This metric indicates the average number of pages viewed per visit. Higher pages-per-session values indicate that users are exploring your site more thoroughly, which is a good sign of engagement.
• Average Session Duration: The average amount of time visitors spend on your website. Longer session durations usually indicate that visitors are finding valuable content and staying engaged.

Conversion Metrics

• Goal Completions: Goals in Google Analytics represent important actions you want visitors to take, such as filling out a preplanning form, scheduling a consultation, or calling your funeral home. By setting up goals, you can track how many visitors are completing these actions.
• Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of visitors who complete a specific goal. For example, if 100 people visit your website and 10 of them fill out a form, your conversion rate is 10%. Monitoring conversion rates helps you determine how effective your website and marketing efforts are at driving leads.

Bonus Tip: Set up Goals in Google Analytics by going to the admin panel and selecting “Goals.” Choose from preconfigured goals, such as “contact form submission” or “phone call,” or create custom goals specific to your funeral home’s needs.

3. Tracking Campaign Performance with UTM Parameters

Effectively measuring marketing success requires understanding your website’s traffic sources. UTM parameters are tags that you add to the URLs of your marketing campaigns (such as social media posts, email newsletters, or Google Ads) to track the performance of each individual campaign.

By using UTM parameters, you can see which campaigns drive the most traffic and conversions.

How to Use UTM Parameters:

• Source: Identifies where the traffic is coming from (e.g., Facebook, Google, email).
• Medium: Describes the marketing channel (e.g., social, paid, organic, or email).
• Campaign: A specific identifier for the campaign (e.g., “lunch and learn” or “holiday special”).

Example:

For example, a Facebook ad campaign promoting preplanning services might use the following URL:

https://www.yourfuneralhome.com/pre-planning?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=preplanning_ad

When people click on the ad and visit your website, Google Analytics will track this traffic and attribute it to your specific Facebook ad campaign.

Bonus Tip: Use Google’s Campaign URL Builder tool to easily create URLs with UTM parameters for your marketing campaigns. This tool automatically generates tagged URLs for you to use in your ads, emails, and other marketing materials.

4. Setting Up and Monitoring Goals in Google Analytics

A key feature of Google Analytics is Goal tracking, which helps monitor important visitor actions, such as submitting a contact form, scheduling an appointment, or calling your funeral home. Setting up goals allows you to track how effectively your website converts visitors into leads.

Common Goals for Funeral Homes:

• Contact Form Submissions: Track how many visitors fill out the contact form to request information or schedule a consultation.
• Phone Calls: Track how many visitors click on your phone number to call your funeral home directly from the website (use click-to-call tracking).
• Preplanning Requests: Track how many visitors submit a preplanning inquiry through your website.

How to Set Up a Goal:

1. Go to the Admin Panel in Google Analytics.
2. Under “View,” select “Goals.”
3. Click on “+ New Goal” and choose a template that matches your objective (e.g., “Contact Us” or “Appointment Booking”).
4. Customize the goal settings based on your funeral home’s needs, such as tracking form submissions or page visits.
5. Save the goal and start tracking conversions.

Bonus Tip: For more advanced tracking, set up Event Tracking in Google Analytics. This allows you to track interactions like video plays, button clicks, and scroll depth, providing even deeper insights into user behavior.

5. Using Reports to Gain Insights and Improve Campaigns

Google Analytics provides a variety of reports that give you a detailed view of how your website and campaigns are performing. Regularly reviewing reports helps identify successful strategies, areas for improvement, and optimization opportunities.

Important Reports for Funeral Homes:

• Acquisition Report: This report details traffic sources, such as organic search, social media, and paid ads. Use this report to evaluate which marketing channels are driving the most visitors to your site.
• Behavior Report: See which pages visitors are viewing the most and how they are interacting with your site. Use this data to determine which pages are most effective at keeping users engaged.
• Conversion Report: Track how well your website is converting visitors into leads. Use this report to monitor goal completions and conversion rates over time.

Bonus Tip: Create custom reports in Google Analytics that focus on the metrics that matter most to your funeral home, such as traffic from specific campaigns, phone call tracking, or form submissions. Custom reports make it easier to access the insights you need to make informed decisions.

Conclusion: Use Google Analytics to Track and Optimize Your Campaigns

Google Analytics is essential for funeral homes to measure marketing success and enhance website performance. By tracking key metrics, setting up goals, and monitoring campaign performance, you can gain valuable insights into how families are interacting with your website and which marketing channels are driving the most conversions. With the right data at your fingertips, you can optimize your funeral home’s digital marketing strategy, attract more families, and grow your client base.