The advanced tools within Google Analytics are helpful in many different business settings. Regardless of the size or nature of your business, the resources and takeaways provided by this program can take your marketing practices to the next level.
That being said, we’ve created a quick guide to improving marketing tactics using this research software! Here are four tips to improve your Marketing using Google Analytics:
Analyze Conversions from a Marketing Perspective
Using the tools in Google Analytics, businesses can gain better perspectives on what exactly causes a user to make a conversion (become a paying customer). To provide a more detailed analysis, Google Analytics breaks this data down to a smaller scale:
- Macroconversions are the purchases/transactions themselves, in which a user purchases a good or service online, bringing in sales revenue to your business.
- Microconversions are the marketing-related steps in the purchase process that bring users closer to completing a macroconversion. These steps include signing up for an email newsletter, creating a customer account, or viewing a product notification.
Create a Measurement Plan to Track your Business Objectives
Regardless of the nature of your business objectives, Google Analytics can incorporate a measurement plan to track your progress! In order to better understand how this works, check out the graphic below:
Business Objective
Strategy #1
- Tactic #1
- KPI
- Tactic #2
- KPI
- Strategy #2
- Tactic #1
- KPI
- Tactic #2
- KPI
- Tactic #1
This diagram shows the general breakdown of a measurement plan for businesses using Google Analytics. As stated above, the business objective is supported by strategies, or courses of action to take.
In order to achieve these strategies, tactics are implemented as a way to track the smaller steps towards completion. These steps are measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which help you measure micro and macro conversions.
Consider using macro-conversions as a way to measure your tactics, and remain informed by tracking your progress towards achieving goals.
On a smaller scale, you can use micro-conversions to better understand the user behavior that leads to these macro-conversions.
All of these concepts provide a step-by-step course of action for organizations to track how daily operations ultimately contribute to the success of the business as a whole!
You can also access more information on Measurement Plans by watching this short video from Google Analytics!
Utilize Event Tracking to Maximize Website Efficiency
In Google Analytics, an Event is considered a user interaction with a particular page element on a website, such as pressing “play” on a video. You can do this by adding a piece of javascript tracking code to the individual aspects of a webpage.
This will create a “hit” every time a user interacts with a page element that has such tracking code.
This will allow you to better understand how users are interacting with your website. This provides takeaways regarding the effectiveness of your content, and whether or not it is contributing to your overall business objectives.
Google Analytics can also track these events on a more specific level using a distinction between Total Events and Unique Events. While total events are the overall number of interactions, unique events are the number of users that actually triggered that event.
For example, if one user watches a video four times, it will register four total events, but only one unique event. This provides more realistic insights regarding legitimate user interactions with your web content!
Harness the Power of Remarketing
It’s no secret that many people browse products via Google on a daily basis. Soon after, advertisements for those same products often pop up on that user’s social media feeds, making it feel like the internet can read minds!
In reality, however, online retail companies now have the ability to track user interaction throughout the purchase process. This means that they can create lists of users who interacted with their site by:
- Viewing the homepage
- Viewing a search page
- Browsing product lists
- Previous purchasers
- Abandoning a shopping cart
As a result, organizations will target advertising content to users who have already visited their site in the attempt to Remarket to these users. If successful, they can bring users back into the purchase process.
Google Analytics does this by collecting product ID’s from viewed merchandise using tracking code. Then, these user lists are combined with Advertising programs such as Adwords and DoubleClick to show ads as users browse elsewhere on the web.
In doing so, businesses are now able to turn failed online sales attempts into conversions, and even repeat customers.
These tools and tactics are all a part of a modern, technology-driven shift in the way businesses understand their customers, and can greatly improve the marketing initiatives of any organization, big or small. As always, further information and tutorials are available through the Google Analytics Academy.