We found out that nearly two out of every three conversions involves more than one touch point…”

Google now shows “multi channel” conversions. Why does this matter?

Because it’ll finally put an end to the silly talk that social media is a waste of time because it doesn’t convert.

Social media is a marketing touchpoint – one that could / should also include email, blogging, SEO, etc.

It just doesn’t make sense, given the social landscape, to image that everyone who comes to your site via a social media channel will buy. They’re not in buying mode, they’re in conversation mode.

That doesn’t mean that they aren’t interested in you, your product, etc. It just means you have to give them something – like great blog content or a reason to join your newsletter – so that you can continue that “conversation mode” they’re already in and reach out to them again via another medium another time.

Consider this scenario: Someone sees a tweet from another person linking to your site. They visit it and like what they see, so they subscribe to your email newsletter. You mail them a few times with some great content, so they begin to know you and trust your info. Later, when you email this new subscriber about your product and they purchase it, that email would get all the credit as being the source of the “conversion” for the purchase. But the person originally came to you from social media.

It’s because of scenarios like this that most analytics packages undervalue social media type traffic.

Google Multi-Channel Funnels changes that, and it’s about time!

If you’re not using Goals in Google Analytics, it’s time to start. You can set up Goals for actual purchases, and you can set up goals for actions like someone signing up for your newsletter.

Without some kind of tracking on these kinds of actions, you’ll never know what’s working and what’s not, and Google’s Multi-Channel reports will help you figure that out even more accurately!