Google Analytics is a powerful tool for brands and businesses worldwide.

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Through the use of Google Analytics, you can unlock a plethora of data and insights about the people who are visiting your website that can be leveraged to supercharge your marketing strategy.

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But for new users of the platform, it can be a minefield. You find yourself asking questions like: What data should I collect? Which metrics should I concentrate on? How can this data add value to our marketing strategy?

We’re here to help you through some of the key questions our clients have when it comes to using Google Analytics for the first time. Let’s go.

What does Google Analytics do?

In simple terms, once you add Google Analytics to your website you will be able to automatically collect data for a whole host of actions that your visitors are performing.

For example, you will discover the most content on your website that people are viewing. Plus you will also be able to see insights about those audience members including where they’re located, their gender and even what devices they’re using.

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But perhaps the best part about Google Analytics is that it combines and compares the performance of all of your digital channels into one central area. So there is no need to jump from platform to platform exporting or copying and pasting data into a report, it’s all done for you!

How does Google Analytics help marketers?

So as you’ve probably already realised, Google Analytics collects a hell of a lot of data. Some of which may be useful, some of it not so much. Therefore, it is imperative that you take time to think about the right data for your marketing strategy.

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For example, if you’re an eCommerce business, then you will probably want to see which product pages are being viewed on your website and how this differs from month-to-month or season-to-season. Or you can go a step further and configure the eCommerce tracking which will allow you to see what channel produced the most revenue from a particular month or if a product is selling better when advertised on social media. This allows you to track and refine your customer journey.

For other types of websites, you can also leverage data from the platform to understand where your leads are coming from, what actions they are performing and the overall conversion rate for each of your channels.

What channels does Google Analytics allow you to report on?

Google Analytics collates traffic statistics from a range of different sources and automatically arranges these into different segments. The most common ones are as follows:

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• Direct – people who arrive at your website directly by typing in your URL.
• Organic Search – free traffic from Google or other search engines.
• Paid Search – paid for traffic from Google AdWords or other ad networks.
• Organic Social – free traffic from social networks.
• Paid Social – paid for traffic from social networks.
• Referral – traffic from third party websites that link to your website.
• Email – traffic from email marketing campaigns.

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From here you should pay close attention to the source and medium attributes. For example traffic with a source of ‘Facebook’ and a medium of ‘Organic Social’ will appear in a different section to traffic from Facebook with a medium of ‘Paid Social’. It’s a surefire way for you to know where your content was seen (source) and how it was published (medium).

Why is Google Analytics an essential tool for marketers?

When used together, the data uncovered will help you make decisions about your marketing strategy and what actions are producing the best quality website traffic.

Say for example, your most recent Twitter campaign produced 500 new visitors to your website, but only 5 of these performed a conversion action, your conversion rate is 1%. However, if your email marketing campaign containing similar content only delivered 50 visitors but 5 of these performed a conversion action, your conversion rate is 10%. Despite producing the same results in terms of conversions, we can safely determine that email marketing is a better audience for that content because the conversion rate is higher.

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It’s all about connecting the dots by analysing the data and seeing what that tells you.

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Here are a few examples of how marketers can use Google Analytics to ensure long term success:

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1. Identifying common attributes within converting leads – such as ages, gender, location – this is data you can use to power-up your PPC or social media adverts.
2. Discovering and understanding seasonal trends – if a product page is getting higher traffic during the Summer months, make sure you promote it as much as possible during that time frame.
3. Comparing and analysing marketing campaigns over different time ranges – if you had a successful campaign in January this year, consider running an updated version of this content in January next year.
4. Finding opportunities to improve your website – if pages have high bounce rates or exit rates, consider fine-tuning the content to make it more engaging. Don’t waste time or money on badly performing pages.
5. Understanding your audience better – if you receive most of your traffic in the afternoon, make sure you are publishing as much content as possible on social media at these peak times.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that benefits businesses of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. It is accessible to every business with a website, so even if you are just starting out you will be able to start collecting data immediately.

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From here, you can start identifying what content is working and what is failing. You can diagnose specific areas that can be improved and gain valuable insights for your next marketing campaign.

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After all, if it wasn’t an awesome tool, we wouldn’t use it every day!

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