Episode 183: How to Track Exactly Where Your Buyers Are Coming From w/Kelsey Silver
Still guessing that your customers are probably coming from Instagram? You’re not alone—and you might be missing critical insights that could transform your sales.
In this value-packed episode, Gloria chats with Kelsey Silver, a licensed therapist turned data strategist, who specializes in making analytics feel empowering (not overwhelming). Kelsey breaks down how to track where your customers actually come from using simple tools like UTM links, QR codes, and even smart social media keywords.
This is the episode every product-based business owner needs to finally stop guessing and start tracking what works—even if you’re allergic to spreadsheets.
✅ Understand Why Knowing Your Customer's Source Improves Marketing ROI
How to use UTM links to track clicks and conversions from Instagram, podcasts, email & more
How to customize QR codes for in-person events like farmers markets and pop-ups
Why focusing on buyers, not just traffic, helps you grow profitably
Why asking “How did you find me?” can be the most powerful data point in your business
How to keep your tracking simple, intentional, and totally doable (even with ADHD or zero tech skills)
Tracking your marketing channels isn’t just for big brands with data teams—it’s a game-changer for small business owners who want to grow strategically. As Kelsey Silver explained, understanding where your customers come from helps you double down on what’s working and ditch what’s not.
Before you invest more time in social media, email campaigns, or in-person events, make sure you’re tracking buyer behavior—not just traffic. Whether through UTM links, QR codes, or simple customer questions, having visibility into your customer journey is what separates guessing from growing.
No matter if you’re just starting out or leveling up your ecommerce game, this episode equips you to track smarter, sell better, and optimize every marketing decision.
Product Businesses! Download my free HOW TO GET INTO A GIFT GUIDE/PRODUCT ROUND UP roadmap for free HERE to get more sales and traffic to your site this season.
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert. Register now at www.gloriachoupr.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join the PR Secrets Masterclass
Join the Small Biz PR Pros Facebook Group
DM the word “PITCH” to us on Instagram to get a pitching freebie https://www.instagram.com/gloriachoupr
Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaychou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/428633254951941
Connect with Kelsey on Instagram — DM her the word “Gloria” to start a convo and see how she does her own tracking!
Google UTM Builder (Free Tool)
Ready to track what really matters in your business? Grab Kelsey Silver’s free guide and discover the 15 key metrics top entrepreneurs use to grow smarter and sell more—without the overwhelm.
Connect with Kelsey on Instagram:
@kelseyesilver — DM her the word “Gloria” to start a convo and see how she does her own tracking!
Additional Resources:
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TRANsCRIPT
00:00:00 Gloria: What's up, small business heroes? Welcome back to Small Business PR where we make PR and marketing super accessible for the everyday small business underdog. So, data, data, data. Now I have to be honest with you. I am an Asian who is terrible at Math. Okay. But when I met Kelsey, what I loved about her was her approach to data. She has gone to the best schools and she is a data nerd, but she's able to distill it in a way that for people like me, who honestly, when I see an Excel sheet and I kind of tense up.
00:00:27 Gloria: She makes it relatable and easy. And so, I know for a lot of you listening, you probably have metrics that you're tracking and metrics that you need to track, but you're not tracking. So today, we're gonna focus on one thing, which is how do you know where the heck your customers are coming from? A lot of times we're playing the guessing game. "Oh, they're coming from Instagram." But we don't know that.
00:00:45 Gloria: So, Kelsey is going to.. you take a data and I mean, scientific approach to tell us exactly where they're coming from, give you actionable strategies on how you can actually measure if that Instagram real is working, if that farmers market, you have people are meeting you, if it's working. So I am just so excited to dive in. Thank you so much for being on the show, Kelsey.
00:01:02 Kelsey: Thank you so much, Gloria, for having me. And I've been listening to your podcast for ages. And so, it's so exciting to be on here with you as one of your guests.
00:01:12 Gloria: You know, I am so grateful for you because you are… you're so many things, but you're so generous with your time. You're actually going to come into my PR program to do a data training. And just like how I make PR accessible, you are very inclusive in the way that you bring people into your world, right? You also call yourself Neuro Spicy CEO. You work with a lot of non-typical people. So, I really love that. So, thank you for championing different experiences and different learning types.
00:01:39 Kelsey: I appreciate that. You know, I am actually a licensed marriage and family therapist among the many jack of all trades things and severely ADHD. And it was interesting the first time I sort of up combined all of my different skill sets and spoke with an entrepreneur who was like.. numbers make me itch worse than about of Poison Ivy. It's actually part of my taglines now because it hits so hard. And I was like, data can be trauma. It's built in. I get it.
00:02:07 Kelsey: I worked with my specialty when I was a therapist was adolescents who would experience sexual assault that resulted in drug use. Trauma with a capital T. But that doesn't mean that all of us aren't carrying some trauma. And in all honesty, for entrepreneurs, a lot of that trauma is numbers related. It's data related. It's that feeling of failure that burnt out gifted and talented kid aspect. So, I'm here to try to make that a little bit less traumatic.
00:02:34 Gloria: Yeah, I really love that you take that approach. And instead of just suffocating us with Excel spreadsheets, we're going to focus really simply, which is how do we know where our things are coming from? So why don't you give us a spiel really quickly about why it's important to know. I mean, I know it's important to know where we work, like where our customers are coming from, but why is it really important to know?
00:02:54 Kelsey: Yeah, absolutely. So, the most important thing for me is that we are not working too hard in our business. Sounds weird, but we built businesses because we wanted to maximize our impact or we wanted to maximize our family time. There's something that we wanted to maximize at a nine to five or corporate job could not give us.
00:03:13 Kelsey: And so, why would we recreate a nine to five for ourselves if our goals are completely different? So, for me, knowing where your customers come from is one of the most essential ways to double down on what is working and stop wasting time on things that aren't. One of my specialties is continuous quality improvement. In that, in continuous quality improvements, it's all about doing more of what's working and less of what isn't.
00:03:43 Kelsey: But for particularly product-based businesses, if you're not understanding where the people that actually buy are coming from, you might be going viral but not selling out. You know those TikTok influencers that sell out a product in seconds, right? They clearly know where the actual buyers are coming from. But for a lot of founders, it's traffic or audience, it's not actually tracking where the buyers are coming from. That's why it's so important.
00:04:11 Gloria: Okay, so what's the first step in getting clear on this thing, this picture of how do we know where people are coming from so we can do more of what works?
00:04:19 Kelsey: Exactly, exactly. So first and foremost, we have to define, decide what our tech stack is. And that can be a very scary phrase for a lot of founders. And but nine times out of ten the tech stack you already have can do everything we're going to be talking about in the next few minutes. And it's just a matter of.. and I hate the phrase, "Do a quick Google." but it's there, you can also DM me. But typically, your tech stack already does the thing. And the thing is, "Am I able to figure out how someone landed on my page?"
00:04:53 Kelsey: Now, for product-based businesses, there's two key ways. The first is if you're doing a lot of in-person things, you customize a QR code that you can put on a little sign on your farmer's market, for example, that says the QR link itself is what we call a UTM. Now I don't know what UTM stands for. I'm going to call it a Universal Tracking mechanism. That's not what it's called, but for the purposes of this conversation, that's what we'll call it. And a UTM has specific little phrases inside of it that tell your analytics, "Hey, this person came from here." And UTMs can be used all over the place. Anywhere you'd put a link, you can put a UTM. And what that does is it tells Google Analytics, it tells most analytics platforms, this person came via this vehicle.
00:05:47 Kelsey: And so, for example, for a farmers' market, you could put the date and the name of the market. And that way, you know, are your spring farmers markets better than your summer farmers markets? Is the farmers market that's held? Now I'm getting very detailed here, but I'm a nerd, so I dig into some of these details. But are the farmers markets that are held in the county parking lot more effective than the ones that are held out on the beach? Because you'll know intuitively as the person that's going to all of these markets, which.. what categories, what descriptors are interesting about those markets. So, as you're able to see who's coming in and then of that group of people who's buying, you're better able to tailor where you spend your time and resources.
00:06:36 Kelsey: So, if we go down this rabbit hole of the farmers' markets that are held on Saturdays that are more health and wellness focused, are the best ones for the raw honey that you sell, then you know, "Okay, I don't need to worry about the foodie farmers markets." because the people that really care about my raw honey are the people who are really into the health and wellness aspect. So, you can spend less time doing the stuff that works less.
00:07:04 Gloria: So, 'cause you're saying different QR codes for different farmers' markets, not the same one, because I know a lot of people do have a QR code where it's like get on my email list. So, you're still saying that the QR code is to get on their email list. You just don't have a different one. So it could be, follow my Instagram or something. UTM is basically a tracking link. It's a unique link that you send people during which time. So, I'll give you an example, right? Like if I am on a podcast and I am giving out a freebie, right, I'm going to tell you to put it in the show notes a different length than if I was on someone else's podcast and they can see if your audience is taking action. So that's the same thing of what you're talking about here. Okay, so that's really good. What else can we do in terms of like, what else should we be tracking?
00:07:43 Kelsey: Well, so the other aspect of tracking that is then converting that information once we know that they're a buyer. Because remember what we talked about the very beginning, it's great to know who's landing on your page. It's much more effective to know who's buying from your page. So we want to set up our analytics in such a way that we can actually tell the conversion rate of that person from that UTM link. And a lot of times we stop there. When we say conversion, a lot of times it's get on my email list. For product-based businesses, email list is great. It's how people learn more about your products and they eventually buy. But we want to understand more what happens between the time they get on your email list and when they buy. So that we know what we need to do more of.
00:08:35 Kelsey: So the person from that wellness farmers market, do they need to see two or three emails from you and then get a coupon code and that's when they buy? Great, let's start sending those coupon codes a little earlier because you've had plenty of people on your podcast that talk about customer lifetime value and average cart value and all those good things, which are great episodes to refer to when we talk about this kind of stuff, because those are sort of the later metrics that you look at once you start understanding, I got somebody to open my wallet. And so it's looking at how do we get that information about that UTM link into our CRM, our Customer Relationship Manager, or whatever email platform you have or whatever, because then you get to do some fun stuff.
009:22 Kelsey: So if I could nerd out for just a moment, and I'm going to try to sort of keep this fairly straightforward, so I'm not going into a lot of detail here, but you can pull, for example, your last year of sales and you can look at that little link field, however you've gotten that into your CRM, and you can say, "Oh my goodness, the percentage of my total buyers for the year that came from this one little farmer's market that not even that many people bought at the farmer's market. The whole year, 40% of my people, 40% of my buyers, pardon me, came from that farmer's market. Well, I got to do more of that stuff.”
00:10:03 Kelsey: So it's looking at it more long-term. We're always taught to look at these short little bursts, but we're long-time business people. We're not in this to sell fast and then get out. Typically, some of us are. But so being able to look at it in quarterly metrics, in even yearly metrics, and see first all of 2024. Where did my people actually come from that opened their wallets for me? That's so much more valuable.
00:10:30 Gloria: And that starts with the same UTM link you're talking about.
00:10:33 Kelsey: Exactly.
00:10:34 Gloria: The first step is to get the UTMs and then over time you can have compounded data.
00:10:38 Kelsey: Precisely. And that it's so simple. It feels so very simple. But that UTM is great for when they're featured in gift guides. It's great for when they are featured in founder story articles. Because again, okay. Do most of my buyers come in from gift guides? Are my buyers coming in from my founder's story? Is that really where my stuff is? And that's when you get to expand that learning into your social media.
00:11:06 Kelsey: So a lot of us, I mean, I'm speaking personally here, but your audience may differ. But personally, I don't get a lot of my clients from social media. I'm a very referral-based business. So when I do get my clients from social media, I know it's usually when I'm talking about trauma and data combined, because I've put a UTM link or I've had a MiniChat set up with the right codeword that I know these people came from a real where I talked about trauma and data analytics. So that making that connection to how did they really find me and when did they open their wallet?
00:11:47 Gloria: Oh, that is so good. It all starts with a UTM code. It's so much easier when you do it at the get go. And then that way you can accumulate. But it's never too late, y'all. You're listening to this for a reason, so just do it now. Now you talked a little bit about social media because we all know a lot of people are still kind of stuck in this social media wheel and I'm trying to get them out of it with SEO and PR. But for the people who are still relying solely on social media, how do we track the effectiveness of that?
00:12:11 Kelsey: Yeah, absolutely. So many of you may have heard of something called MiniChat and you can either do MiniChat and it's true that's actually a piece of software aspect or if you're small enough, you might be manually doing a MiniChat Ask Automation and that's fine too. Does not matter. But this you've probably seen on social comment the word blank. Well, that's a really great place to start because you have them comment something that helps trigger you as to what that theme is. And whether you have a VA or whether you're doing it yourself, you start going back through and saying, "Oh, you know what? A lot of these people did end up buying and they all came in with the keyword,”
00:12:58 Kelsey: You know, honey. These people all came in with the keyword blueberry, whatever it is, as long as it means something to you. It's then connecting that to did they buy? Did you offer them a coupon code? Did you get them on your email list? But then you filled that little keyword in on that field in their contact form in your CRM so that you knew what keyword they used. It's all about keeping the data accessible for you. And then you can do the same kind of analytics. You look back a year, you look at that little field and you say, "Huh, 20% came from this. Now I know to do more of that."
00:13:25 Gloria: So in terms of the comment, it could be like, you're doing a reel behind the scenes of BTS, reel of you making candles. And then you can say if you want to know our latest drops or it doesn't have to be a coupon or a coupon code.
00:13:47 Kelsey: No. Not all.
00:13:49 Gloria: You know, comment, comment.
00:13:51 Kelsey: BTS.
00:13:52 Gloria: Yeah, BTS. And so it's not about having like 50 different words for every single reel, but just like one for social media, one for farmers markets, one for podcasts, right?
00:14:00 Kelsey: Exactly. And in truth, you might get granular. Okay, so I said at the top of this conversation that I have severe ADHD. So I found that one of my biggest issues was that I tried to get too granular. I tried to, you know, behind the scenes, comment, you know, VIP, comment that I had like 16 different words that people could comment and I don't even have that much social media traffic. And so it became very difficult to find trends because I was looking too granular. So start small, start with maybe three or if you do the content pillar aspect of social media, have one word for each of your content pillars, pick no more than three to five and five is pushing it. And that way, you're not sort of keeping on this hamster wheel of trying to track a thousand things.
00:14:51 Kelsey: When people first come to me, I always say, start tracking one thing you're not used to tracking. And so, you know, in this case, we're talking UTMs as our largest, but in reality, it could be just that comment on the social media. And you've got to keep it small for yourself because if it's not manageable, you're not going to do it. You're simply going to stop looking at it. And so you start small and you start looking with an aspect of curiosity. You are not trying to prove a hypothesis. You're not trying to revamp your entire strategy. You're getting curious about what additional information you might find out about the people that you want to serve anyway. You're in business to do something really cool. So what information can we find to do more of that really cool stuff?
00:15:37 Gloria: Yeah, really good. So start small, just have one word for every platform. So for example, for me, I'll have one word if I'm on someone's podcast, but then I'll have another word if it's paid, if it's like an ad. So that way I know what's organic and what's coming from an ad funnel. So you talk about UTM, what does it actually look like? How do we get a UTM? How do we create one or five?
00:15:57 Kelsey: Yeah. So one of the easiest ways to do it is Google has their own UTM builder. So you literally Google UTM builder and you go to Google's. And what's great about a UTM is it always has the same base URL, which is the same page that you're always going to go to. So, Google's going to ask you to plug that in. Great. You plug that in. And then you get to determine your campaign source, medium, and name. And so things that you might use are email versus podcast versus in-person, and then so that might be your source. Your UTM format might be, you know, you can even put QR if you want to track how many people did QR codes.
00:16:45 Kelsey: These are completely arbitrary. They mean nothing to the analytics other than what they mean to your brain, and your ability to filter things. Just keep track of them. Throw them in a spreadsheet somewhere, jot them in your bullet journal. It doesn't matter as long as you remember which ones you've used. Because they are case sensitive, things like that. So you want to keep them consistent. But then the campaign name would be either the specific podcast or the specific gift guide that you were in or the specific farmers market. And that would be campaign name. Once you get all three of those required fields in, Google will spit out this pretty little link that has the base URL and then a bunch of stuff after this question mark. The stuff is what makes it a UTM link.
00:17:32 Kelsey: There's also software that does this for you. For example, Pretty Links does this for you. Bitly is a similar one that does this for you. So, there's a lot of software out there that will do it for you as well. But if you're still in the scrappy stages, or even not the scrappy stages, I still use it; the Google UTM Builder is great. And any analytics platform knows how to ingest that and spit back out the right kind of information for you.
00:17:58 Gloria: Oh, so good. I'm so excited to… that it's free, that it's on Google and you can just make four or five. So if you're listening right now, just start with one. Probably Instagram, you're on Instagram anyways, right? Like that way you can track how many people are actually in your funnel from Instagram. So just start with that. If you're at the farmers market, at least make a different QR code for different farmers markets. You can start to see the seasonality or variability of it. That's really great. Are there any other tips? Because obviously you can see, and you can get real complex about this, but other quick tips that we can take action on if we're kind of newbies to this whole thing.
00:18:30 Kelsey: Yeah, start with getting curious about where your buyers, what your buyers are doing. So I love customer behavior. It's my favorite thing to look into. And it's really based on what we started this conversation with. How do I know how to do more with what I know is working? But so often we focus on what would typically be considered a vanity metric, whether it's followers or even the number of people on your email list.
00:18:57 Kelsey: What really matters is customer behavior, the people that actually open their wallets for you. And so even if you can't handle the numbery number stuff that we've talked about today, just get curious about your buyers themselves, focusing on the last part of what we would call a funnel where they've already purchased from you, especially if they have come back to purchase from you because repeat customers, you know, yes, please. And so focus on what makes those people different. Let me get curious about those people and work your way backwards.
00:19:37 Gloria: Yeah, that is actually so good. I think so many of us, I don't want to say are afraid, but I just, it's almost like someone makes a purchase and you kind of go and run and hide, right? But the more that you ask a customer, especially a customer who maybe wanted a refund, which nobody wants, but the more that you ask that, the more power you're going to have. And a lot of times it's the uncomfortable conversations that we're not willing to have.
00:19:56 Gloria: And so you know, what I have done is now anyone that either finds me or joins my peer program, the first question I ask is, hey, I love knowing about your customer journey. Can you please tell me how you found me? And most of the time they will say podcast. And so I know that podcast is a really good medium for me. And that is a really… like a focus of mine, right? To get onto more podcasts, like more than anything else. So then I know it works, but you don't know that until you start asking questions.
00:20:22 Gloria: So like Kelsey said, please get feedback, give them an incentive. Like maybe it's, I don't know, like give them a Spotify playlist or give them something that's low cost to you so that you can get that data, whether it's $5 Starbucks card. But I promise you, your business will get so much better and more profitable. The more questions you ask, the more curious you are. So thank you so much. Kelsey, for that. That is one part that I mean, we could make a whole podcast episode just on customer survey, but just at the minimum, at the minimum, every single person that buys from you, try to get an answer from them.
00:20:55 Gloria: And if they don't fill that out, email them back. Hey, we'd love to know you didn't tell me like where you found me, and that's people like to tell you how they found you, you know, and they may not remember, but at least they'll give you an idea. So that should be just essential. Like one-on-one, ask every single person. And honestly, if they ask for a refund or they're not happy, like ask them even more questions. You can only get better. So thank you so much for reminding us of that. The survey part, I feel like we could do another episode just on that. You've given us so much. So, definitely ask where they're coming from. Like just ask whether it's an email or a form or a poll or a DM. Ask them where they're from. Use the Google, you said link builder?
00:21:31 Kelsey: UTM builder.
00:21:33 Gloria: UTM builder and come up with at least one or two different unique tracking links to put on your QR codes or your Instagram and start getting that data. A year from now, we will be having a very different conversation. So thank you so much for this. You have so much knowledge and you're so generous with your time. Thank you so much for making it accessible for us. How can people find you?
00:21:51 Kelsey: Yeah, so I am always up for a good conversation. I have a static nine grid, so you're not gonna see me posting a whole lot, but I am always good for a DM conversation. I'm on Instagram, Kelsey E. Silver. Just DM me “Gloria”, so that I know where you came from, because I do my own tracking, just like we had a conversation today. Sometimes it's easier to just DM somebody a random word, as opposed to trying to think of a cool question. So DM me “Gloria”, and I will start the conversation.
00:22:19 Kelsey: And if you would like to know more about some interesting metrics, I had a really fun time asking 15 different six and seven-figure business owners what was one metric they could not live without. And so if you'd like to hop on my email list and find that out, you can go to kelseysilver.com/15metrics, 1-5 metrics. And you'll hear from Jordan Gill, Ellen Yin, all sorts of fun people about if they were stuck on a desert island and had to measure one thing in their business and nothing else, what would it be?
00:22:52 Gloria: Amazing. Or just DM her the word “Gloria” and tell her how much you love this conversation.
00:22:59 VO: Hey, small business hero, did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, the New York Times, Marie Claire, PopSugar, and so many more, even if you're not yet launched or if you don't have any connections? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR secrets masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert.
00:23:27 VO: Now, if you want to land your first press feature, get on a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig, or just reach out to that very intimidating editor, this class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at Gloria Chou pr.com slash masterclass. That's Gloria Chou, chou, pr.com slash masterclass. So, you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So, get in there and let's get you featured.