You’ve created a piece of premium content that you’re proud of. You’ve designed a landing page with all the best practices represented. Your call-to-action (CTA) even makes you want to click on it. You’ve written a series of SEO-optimized blog posts on the same topic, and your content offer is appearing on each of the posts. You’re sharing the posts via social media. Everything is running smoothly.

But is your inbound effort successful, and what could make it more successful?

Marketing automation software is created to make our lives as marketers easier and more effective—though sometimes the plethora of tools can be a little overwhelming and we might even forget to use some along the way. I’m here today to remind you of the small but mighty tracking URL. Let’s dive in with some Q&A:

What is a tracking URL?

A tracking URL is a normal URL that has a “token” associated with it (on the end of the URL). It allows traffic driven to a page or website to be properly sourced depending on the individual place(s) you used it. When used with a marketing automation platform, like HubSpot for example, it will be seen in your Sources Report where it separates the different traffic from each URL.

As the world is becoming more targeted and personal, content marketing metrics have become vital. As an effective strategy to generate leads and grow your business, content marketing only works if you know what and when to adjust.

Recently I wrote a blog post that discussed the ROI of Inbound Marketing programs and what you should expect after the first year. This original post was created due to the frustration that first year inbound marketers sometimes have with not being able to measure the impact of their efforts in a traditional sense.