by samWe are all accustomed to making resolutions in our personal lives every January; but why shouldn’t we begin each new business year with the same motivated, goal-orientated attitude? Michael Loban, CMO of InfoTrust, a Google Analytics Certified Partner, has done just that, outlining his New Years resolutions for implementing Google Analytics throughout 2013, a checklist any internet marketing specialist should consider completing.
First up is a major stumbling block for many digital marketers: the dreaded web analytics data. Solution? Don’t dedicate your time to anything before you know what you’re looking for; align Google Analytics configuration with your business marketing goals.
Next, be aware of the monetary value of everything on your site. This may be an obvious PPC return, or an indirect worth reliant on visitors submitting forms, playing videos or downloading PDFs. Simply vowing to decrease bounce rate by 5{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} is not enough – equate this decrease to the amount of money generated, should visitors remain to engage with your content as intended.
Using Attribution Modelling (now available to all Google Analytics users) can indicate how your site’s marketing strategies contribute to a sale or conversion, indicating when you may need to remarket certain strategies. Improving Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is often a significant remarketing step, but measuring it can be a headache. Google Analytics Social Reports aid SMO by tracing visitors entering your site via Social Media channels, tracking conversations to the channels’ value and examining how your content is shared.
Once you have your data, ensure your team knows how to analyse, understand, and effectively utilise it to best reach your marketing goals. Realised you lack substantial context to make a decision? Stop! Now get more data. Understanding SEO is vital here; Measuring Performance of Paid Campaigns using a cost data import displays how non-Google paid search campaigns compare to your other marketing approaches.
Having analysed and understood your information remarketing may be necessary. Remarketing is now available inside Google Analytics so needn’t become a nuisance – the tool provides rich insights about your customers and focuses on SEO, targeting them with ads that respond to what they’re seeking.
One of the most exciting areas of marketing is mobile optimisation. Google Analytics have announced a public beta launch for Mobile App Analytics, a tool which is rapidly becoming invaluable by segmenting and understanding mobile visitors. Such data will enable you to provide a winning experience resulting in conversions and sales.
An essential step is to begin measuring your analytics in terms of Return On Investment; all that time spent collecting, reporting and analysing data isn’t free after all. Measure your Return On Analytics to prove the value of this work – and there is significant value: accurately collected and analysed data leads to accurate marketing decisions.
Finally, action those analytics! Turning your data into actionable marketing reports and smart dashboards will help the analysis, and successful data analysis provides such clear information that you’ll know exactly how to achieve your marketing objectives. Don’t settle for anything less.