Google Analytics and the Success of Digital Marketers

Google Analytics lets businesses of all sizes measure and improve the performance of their website and digital marketing. It can provide insights into your audience, including prospects and customers. However, Google Analytics can be an intimidating platform, especially for marketers and businesses just getting started for the first time.

You might be asking – What Google Analytics data should you collect? How can this information add value to your business? Which metrics should you focus on, and what should you skip? How much data should you collect?

We’re going to cover some key questions for marketers when it comes to Google Analytics. Let’s get started!

What does Google Analytics do, and why does it matter for marketers?

It’s a great question when just about every website builder, advertising platform, and social network comes with its own built-in analytics. What is the point of installing Google Analytics anyway? It generally comes down to having all of your digital analytics together. It’s about being able to compare the performance of all of your marketing channels and connecting this to what people are doing on your website, app, or both.

What does Google Analytics do?

Once you’ve added the Google Analytics tag to your website (either directly or using Google Tag Manager), you will be automatically collecting data for a range of actions people are performing. For example, you will be able to understand the most popular pages on your website that people are viewing. And apart from what people are doing, you will also be able to see insights about those audience members. This includes the devices they’re using and where they’re located.

What else do marketers need to know about Google Analytics?

Although Google Analytics collects a lot of data with a single tag on your website, taking time to configure your reports based on the needs of your organization will provide additional benefits.

For example, if you’re selling products online, then you will be able to see the product pages viewed on your website. However, to really understand the behavior of your customers, you’ll need to configure ecommerce tracking. Once set up, you will be able to connect your marketing channels, the pages people view and the actions they take, right through to the products they purchase.

The same is also true for other types of websites. For example, if your site is designed to generate leads, then setting up conversions in Google Analytics will allow you to understand what is helping you drive leads. So even if you’re not responsible for configuring Google Analytics, understanding the possibilities is critical. This is just one of the reasons people join our Google Analytics courses.

Why does Google Analytics matter for marketers?

As we’ve already touched on, it’s really about connecting the dots. From how people find your website, what they do, if they convert, and if you retain clients and customers. Google Analytics can help you:

1. Find similarities and differences in groups of users
2. Identify and view seasonal trends
3. Understand your prospects and customers in greater detail
4. Compare and evaluate your marketing efforts
5. Inform your content strategy
6. Identify barriers to conversions and sales
7. Find opportunities to improve your website and marketing
8. Provide automatic insights driven by Google’s machine learning

The latest version of Google Analytics includes features like anomaly detection (which automatically identifies spikes and dips in traffic), data-driven attribution (where marketing channels are automatically given credit for conversions), and other automated insights. And when marketers also apply context to the reports, it can unlock opportunities to refine strategies and further enhance results. Using Google Analytics really can contribute to your bottom line.

What marketing channels does Google Analytics report?

Google Analytics identifies a range of different marketing channels and automatically classifies them into default channel groupings. The most common classifications include:

• Paid Search for Google Ads and other traffic from paid ads
• Organic Search for free traffic from Google and other search engines
• Paid Social for campaign tagged traffic from social networks
• Organic Social for free traffic from social networks
• Paid Video for ads on YouTube and other video ads
• Organic Video for free referrals from YouTube and other video platforms
• Paid Shopping for campaign tagged traffic from shopping sites
• Organic Shopping for free referrals from shopping sites
• Email for campaign tagged traffic from email campaigns
• Referral links on third-party websites sending people to your website
• Display for paid display network traffic, including from Google Ads
• Direct for traffic that is seen as coming to your website directly
• Unassigned for traffic that doesn’t meet one of Google’s classifications

What is ‘source’ and ‘medium’ in Google Analytics?

Apart from viewing the default channel groupings in Google Analytics, you can also use the source and medium dimensions for more granular reporting. ‘Source’ tells you where your marketing message was seen, and ‘medium’ tells you how the message was communicated. For example, a source of ‘google’ and a medium of ‘organic’ tells you that someone found your website after clicking through from Google and that they clicked one of the free (organic) listings in the search results.

Learn more about source, medium, and other dimensions in our Google Analytics Glossary.

How do I track custom marketing in Google Analytics?

As we’ve covered, Google Analytics will show you how people find your website once you’ve installed the tag on your website. But to capture and report on your own marketing initiatives, you will need to tell Google Analytics how people are finding your website.

You can do this by adding campaign tags to all of the inbound links you use to send people to your website. For example, when you send out an email to your customers or launch a new ad campaign on a social network. It will typically take a few minutes to create appropriate campaign-tagged URLs for Google Analytics, and once people click through using these links, you will be collecting insights about your custom marketing.

Learn more about tracking campaigns in Google Analytics.

How to use Google Analytics to your advantage?

You can learn a lot about your website and your audience using Google Analytics. Whether you use the pre-configured reports or create your own custom exploration reports, there are always opportunities to dig deeper into the data that’s been collected.

Here are some questions you can use when exploring your reports:

1. How are people finding your website? What marketing channels are they using? And what pages are they landing on first?
2. How do your marketing channels compare? Which channel drives the most users to your website? Which channel results in the most conversions or sales? Are there any channels that aren’t driving conversions?
3. Who is visiting your website? Where are they located? What devices are they using to view your website?
4. What pages do people view on your website? Which pages have the highest levels of engagement? What other actions do people take on your website?
5. Apart from the data in the reports, is there any other context I can apply? Are there any external factors (like holidays or industry trends) that might impact the number of people engaging with the website?

The bottom line: Google Analytics can boost your results

Google Analytics is useful for all types of organizations, from solopreneurs to small and medium businesses, through to multi-national brands. And the great thing about Google Analytics is that it’s accessible to every business, so even if you’re just starting out, adding the standard tag to all of the pages of your website will start delivering insights almost immediately.

And while the latest version of Google Analytics, called Google Analytics 4 (or GA4 for short), has a steeper learning curve compared to the previous version. It does include some very handy features, like automatically tracking people clicking outbound links and downloading files without having to add any additional code to your website.

By identifying what is working and what isn’t, you will be able to pinpoint areas that can be improved on your website and in your next marketing campaign.

Should you learn more about Google Analytics?

The short answer is yes, yes, you should. Whether you will be hands-on with Google Analytics or you will be collaborating with other people looking after your digital analytics, it’s important to understand the foundations and potential of the platform. At Loves Data, we offer a comprehensive and advanced Google Analytics course to take your practical skills and knowledge to the next level. You will learn how to set up and configure Google Analytics through to using and customizing the reports.