In this 10 part series, we are exploring simple steps you can take to get your digital house in order – before you start paying for advertising.

Last week in Step 6, we covered ‘Setting up Website Audiences’.

Now lets move on to Step 7.
 

We all start at the same place: zero readers

– Darren Rowse, Problogger

Baseline with Unpaid Traffic

When you are confident that all steps above have been carried out correctly, give your website at least 30 days (hopefully more) to record clean, measured online activity from all sources of unpaid traffic – direct, referral, organic, social and perhaps email sources.

Factoring in for time of year seasonality, you now have your ‘baseline’ data (ie. how many leads, from which source/s at what conversion rates your website achieves) under ‘normal’ conditions – in other words, without advertising.

Above: Note how the above data shows Jan & Feb baseline before engagement, March onboarding and April optimisation

Now that you have this baseline data, and assuming you hold your marketing efforts consistent, from here you know that any lift you achieve (even for Direct/Referral/Organic sources) can now be attributed to Paid Advertising.

Now that you have established your Baseline with Unpaid Traffic, stay tuned next week for the next step in Before you pay for clicks: Part 8.