Case Study
Setting Up Analytics, Google Ad Grant, and Marketing Campaign Tracking for Statewide Land Conservancy
The Challenge
TennGreen Land Conservancy is the oldest accredited statewide land conservancy in Tennessee. With a small, agile communications team of two, TennGreen needed support measuring the effectiveness of marketing activities across different digital channels.
At the time, organizations were transitioning to Google Analytics 4 ahead of the 2023 sunset date for Universal Analytics. We took this opportunity to tackle several interconnected upgrades at once:
- Upgrading to Google Analytics 4 and setting up custom conversions for the specific user actions aligned with TennGreen organizational goals
- Applying for the Google Ad Grant and launching free search ad campaigns for the first time
- Providing training for the team in more advanced use of UTM tracking codes to monitor the performance of multi-channel digital marketing campaigns
Deliverables
Ed at Blue Hills Digital has been absolutely wonderful to work with! He’s extremely knowledgeable about all things digital and goes above and beyond to provide support. He’s been immensely helpful in a number of projects outside of our organization’s expertise and capacity. I recommend him to anyone looking for assistance!
Carolyn Rehm, Communications Manager
Solution #1: Connecting marketing goals with custom GA4 conversions
We started with a strategic-level conversation to identify specific user-actions on the TennGreen website that align with organization-wide goals.
With these actions identified, I proceeded with the setup and configuration of a new Google Analytics 4 property, complete with custom conversion events to measure the form-submissions, downloads, button clicks, and more that allowed the communications team to measure the user-actions that matter most. (For tech-minded readers, this required adding Google Tag Manager to their existing WordPress site since not all conversion events could be implemented in the GA4 interface.)
Solution #2: Establishing a new Google Ad Grant account
With the GA4 property and conversions set up, we were able to move on to take advantage of the Google Ad Grant program, which provides $10k/month in free Google search advertising.
To save the team time and headaches, I managed the grant application and initial setup process, connecting campaigns to the conversion events we had created in GA4.
The team also received training to manage the Ad grant account and stay in compliance with Google Ad Grant program requirements in the future.
Solution #3: UTM code training and interactive marketing dashboards
To help the TennGreen team get the most out of their investments in digital marketing, I provided training in the use of UTM codes to track outcomes for a multi-channel digital marketing campaign. Our first use-case for this training was registration and engagement with TennGreen’s annual Hike-a-Thon peer-2-peer fundraising event, with traffic coming from paid social, paid search, social, email, partner, and offline channels.
Finally, we used Databox to create a series of interactive digital marketing dashboards connected to the organization’s GA4, email, search console, and social media accounts.
Results
By the end of the project, the TennGreen communications team had:
