You're getting ready to start marketing and advertising your new website but you keep reading about how you should set up "conversion tracking" first.

You may be wondering, "what even is a conversion!?".

A "conversion" in regards to advertising and marketing, can be defined however you want. It's slightly different for every business but, in general, for lead generation campaigns, I usually track form submissions like contact form or email optins as a conversion, as well as calls, chat intiations, online meetings booked and clicks on email links.

Essentially any way a website visitor can become a lead, you want to track that action as a "conversion". Why? Because it allows you to identify which ad channels, ad creatives and keywords are generating the best results for you, in other words, which ones are generating the most conversions (i.e. leads).

Having this conversion data allows you to maximize your advertising budget by allocating it towards ad channels, ad creatives and keywords that are driving the best results.

If you have an e-commerce website then you're likely going to track sales as a conversion also "add to carts". The same reasoning applies here. This will allow you to identify which ad channels, ad creatives and keywords are generating the most sales and "add to cart" actions so you can maximize those actions.

Without conversion tracking in place, you're essentially driving blind with your marketing which is a great way to waste money.