Want to get off to a great start for 2014? Each day for the next two weeks, we will be posting a marketing resolution for the New Year.

#8: I will tag my inbound advertising links this year so I can track ROI

Tracking inbound links is the first step in evaluating the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. A well-organized system for implementing tracking codes will pay dividends in managing campaign performance and auditing performance across several systems with vastly different cost and performance metrics.

There are lots of software solutions to help online marketing managers track and analyze performance including Adobe Analytics, Webtrends, and Google Analytics; most of the builders we work with have Google Analytics installed.  Google Tracking Codes give marketers the ability to track activity from third party sites like your listings on New Home Source or a banner campaign. Tracking URLs are easy to set up and can provide a wealth of information regarding performance of listings, banner advertising, emails and more.

Read the blog post: Measuring Ad Performance to learn more about tracking performance.