7 Secrets You Learn From Google Analytics
When creating content for your marketing strategy, you have to be smart with how you reach your audience to get the best results. Google Analytics is a powerful data tool that you or your marketing analyst can use to take your marketing plan to the next level. It is the most widely used web analytics service on the web that gives you the information you need to hone in on your audience. In this article, we are going to discuss eight features of Google Analytics that you can use to improve your marketing strategy.
How Visitors Find Your Website
A great first step in the process of using Google Analytics to your advantage is to identify how your audience reaches your website in the first place. Analytics can tell you how many visitors used Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox or Chrome to get to your page. Understanding which web browser is used most often to find your website enables you to tweak your web presence.
Let’s say that you have a large majority of people landing on your website using the Chrome browse. It is in your best interest to make sure that you or your web developer modifies your website in a way that ensures it runs smoothly on the Chrome platform so that the majority of your audience is getting the best possible experience with your website. The agility of your website is impacted by various factors and understanding your most popular browser can ensure peak web performance, fast loading times, and more. That isn’t to say that you should neglect the appearance of your website on other browsers. Rather, it gives you a sense of what is the top priorities for your website management.
Identify What Keeps Visitors On Your Page
You know how people find you, but what about your website works for them? Analytics allows you to see what a client's experience is by measuring where they are clicking, what pages they are going to, how long they are staying on a page, and ultimately where they end up in the end. This data is a big help in fine tuning your content and calls to action to create the best possible experience for your audience that is both engaging and consistently strong.
Streamline Your Calls to Action
When looking at how your audience interacts with your website through Google Analytics it is imperative to develop content that is clean, easy to understand, and clearly directs your audience into your sales funnel. Your visitors will not respond to your brand if you are not engaging them in a way that drives them to continue reading or respond to your call to action. Google Analytics can be used to identify what content you put out or what portions of your website obtains the most clicks. It is worth identifying what information is not resonating with your audience as well as what material stands out. Use this information to strengthen your brand’s message everywhere including Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms that give you direct access to your audience.
What is the ideal situation? A customer lands on your site, does a bit of research on your product or service and ends up with a shopping cart of your product. Sometimes it takes a few extra steps to get to that end result, and sometimes the path that your audience takes leads to failure. Identify what user experiences lead to conversations using Google Analytics and drive your marketing strategies toward improving and optimizing these experiences. If there is a trend in which customers click on your homepage or wind up watching a video found on your about page, then click away you address that. By identifying this trend you can work to figure out a way to stop it and instead direct your visitors to a prominent call to action.
Explore Benchmark Reporting
How do you measure up against your competition? Google Analytics offers a very powerful tool called Benchmark Reporting that allows you to compare your performance against others in your industry. There are hundreds and hundreds of categories of industries to chose from, as well as a wide range of factors like location and traffic to hone in on your competition and see how they are doing to ensure you remain competitive.
Measure Your Success Rate of Advertising
A big factor on your mind when running a marketing campaign is how well your paid advertising is working. You do not want to be spending capital on ads that never seem to have any payoff. With Google Analytics, this isn’t such a blind hope anymore. You are able to use Analytics’ popular feature called Cost Analysis to generate reports on your paid ads, SEO and keywords.
Through Cost Analysis you can obtain data about impressions and clicks, which can be used in comparison to what you spent to see the actual return on your investment of the ad run. It’s also great at comparing your current ads in comparison to previous ads in order to identify what was successful to help break down the elements of why it was successful.
Track Your On The Go Visitors
The way your visitors find and view your website is quickly changing. Many of your visitors are away from desktop computers and use mobile devices like tablets and smartphones to access your website. Google knows this, and that’s why Analytics has several features to track your mobile users. Similar to how you are able to identify the browser usage of your audience, Analytics allows you to track what kind of devices your audience is using.
If you are getting a lot of mobile traffic, you want to make sure that your mobile website is just as solid and responsive as your full website. It’s no longer good enough to have your mobile site be a lighter version. You need to give your audience the full experience in a readable and engaging way on mobile devices. In fact, experienced marketers are promoting a “mobile first” attitude when it comes to building a responsive or mobile friendly website.
Tracking Milestones to Improve Performance
Milestones are important to set early on so you don’t lose sight of what your website and goals are all about. Google Analytics gives you the ability to measure when you hit those milestones. Whether its 10,000 website visits or 100 conversions, Analytics can give you a precise update on these goals and continuously track your progress. This feature can give you motivation and push you to the next level.
The secrets revealed by Google Analytics have the power to shape and form your overall marketing strategy. It's a great way to fine tune your brand, as well as give you insights into who your audience is and what they like. Using it wisely can give you the results you need to take your marketing campaign to the next level.
For more information about how Google Analytics can improve your website’s performance and retargeting campaigns speak to one of our experienced marketing analyst.
