In digital marketing, tracking conversions is a key method for measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns. However, not all conversions are equal. Understanding the different types of conversions, such as assisted conversions, main conversions, and secondary conversions, can give you a deeper insight into how users interact with your brand and which touchpoints are most effective in driving business success.
What is a Conversion?
A conversion is when a user completes a desired action on your website or platform. This could be anything from making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form, or downloading a resource. Tracking conversions helps businesses understand the outcomes of their marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement.
Main Conversions: The Primary Goal
Main conversions (or primary conversions) are the most important actions that directly align with your business goals. These conversions represent the ultimate objective of your marketing campaigns. For instance, if you run an online store, your main conversion would likely be a purchase. For a service-based business, it might be a consultation booking or a lead submission.
Main conversions are typically tracked on pages like thank you pages, order confirmation screens, or success messages that appear once the user completes the desired action. These conversions provide the most direct value to the business because they result in sales, sign-ups, or other tangible outcomes.
Key Characteristics of Main Conversions:
- Directly tied to business goals (e.g., purchases, form submissions)
- Indicate immediate business value
- Represent the final action users take in the customer journey
Assisted Conversions: Supporting the Journey
Assisted conversions are the actions that indirectly contribute to the main conversion. These conversions don’t directly lead to the final action but help guide the user towards it. For example, a customer might first click on a Google ad’s, later receive an email offering a discount, and finally make a purchase. While the email might be the direct trigger for the purchase, the Google ad is considered an assisted conversion because it played a role in the overall process.
Assisted conversions provide insights into how different touchpoints across the marketing funnel work together to push the user toward a final decision. They’re crucial for understanding the customer journey and the value of various marketing channels.
Key Characteristics of Assisted Conversions:
- Indirectly contribute to the main conversion
- Represent earlier stages of the customer journey
- Can be attributed to multiple touchpoints (e.g., social media, email, ads)
For example, if a user clicks on an ad for your product and later completes a purchase via an organic search, the ad click would be an assisted conversion because it helped move the customer closer to making a purchase.
Secondary Conversions: Additional Value Metrics
In addition to main and assisted conversions, businesses can track secondary conversions. These are actions that don’t directly contribute to revenue or your main business goals, but still provide valuable insights into customer interest and engagement. Secondary conversions could be actions like:
- Newsletter sign-ups
- Whitepaper or ebook downloads
- Account registrations
- Watching a product demo video
These conversions are often seen as “soft” conversions because they help build a relationship with potential customers but don’t result in immediate business outcomes. However, secondary conversions are still important for long-term strategy and lead nurturing.
Key Characteristics of Secondary Conversions:
- Don’t result in immediate revenue but are valuable for lead nurturing
- Indicate user engagement and interest in your products or services
- Can help guide future marketing efforts
Why Should You Track All Three Types of Conversions?
Tracking main, assisted, and secondary conversions is essential for gaining a holistic view of your marketing strategy. Main conversions show you what’s working right now, while assisted conversions provide insights into the customer journey and secondary conversions help you understand long-term engagement.
By tracking all types of conversions, you can:
- Identify key touchpoints that drive both immediate and future conversions
- Optimise your marketing campaigns to move users further down the funnel
- Measure the effectiveness of your lead nurturing efforts and refine your customer journey
Tracking all three allows you to make data-driven decisions, optimise marketing spend, and ultimately improve the return on investment (ROI) from your campaigns.
Conclusion
In conclusion, understanding the differences between main conversions, assisted conversions, and secondary conversions is crucial for a well-rounded marketing strategy. Each type of conversion provides different insights into the user’s journey and contributes to your overall business goals. By tracking and analysing these conversions, you can optimise your campaigns, improve user experience, and drive better long-term results for your business.
At Boko Digital Solutions, we specialise in helping businesses track and improve their conversion strategies. We offer a variety of digital marketing services designed to help you grow, including conversion rate optimization, search engine optimization (SEO), Google Ads, Meta ads, and many more. Get in touch with us today for a free consultation, and let us guide you towards a more effective marketing strategy. Book your consultation now!
Sources:
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11461796?hl=en
https://growmyads.com/primary-vs-secondary-conversions/
https://www.optimizesmart.com/assisted-conversions-report-in-google-ads-google-adwords