“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted;
the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
~John Wanamaker
I’ve used this quote many times. It just really sums up the power of digital marketing and analytics. Just imagine if you knew which half was a waste of time. Think of how powerful your campaigns could be.
Google Analytics And More!
A few weeks ago I presented at a lunch and learn for the Marketing and Design Club at The Candy Factory. I talked about the benefits of and best practices of using Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio.
Google Tag Manager – GTM
I always like to start with GTM because if you set it right it makes your analytics setup much easier.
Benefits
- A flexible way to set up analytics tracking
- Less dependent on developers
- Ability to create one tag that covers your whole site
- Highly customizable
- Deploy Google and third-party tags all in one place
- Test tracking before going live and version control
Google Analytics
- Make sure YOU own the account
- Start with a measurement plan
- Setup at least two views
- Filter out internal traffic
- Bot Filtering
- Setup up Goals – These are your conversions
- Link tagging for campaigns
- Link Google Ads and Google Search Console accounts
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Best
Practices
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Google Analytics Benefits
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- It is free!
- Figure out where your users are coming from
- What do your visitors do on your site?
- What marketing channels are the most valuable
- Use it for segmentation to target visitors better
- Traffic flow: I.e. what pages are performing best
- Fine-tune your website
Setup
At Least
Two Views
Filter Out
Internal
Traffic
Setup
Bot
Filtering
Set Up Goals
These Are Your
Conversions
Connect Google Ads & Search Console
Link Tagging for Campaigns
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Google Data Studio
Data Studio gives you the ability to pull information from Google Analytics, AdWords, YouTube, Search Console, and countless other data sources.
- Multiple Data Sources
- Highly Customizable
- Sharing and Collaboration
- Real-time & Filtering
- Plus, guess what. It is free!
Data Studio Example Reports
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Resources
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Download the Presentation
Need Help With Your Analytics Strategy?
We offer GTM Consulting as well as full digital analytics reporting. We can help you understand and leverage your data to it’s fullest.
