How to Measure & Optimise Your Digital Marketing Campaigns With Google Analytics

The beauty of digital marketing is that it allows you to gain a complete understanding of which digital marketing tactics are flourishing along with which tactics are simply proving a waste of valuable resources. With the help of a measurement platform like Google Analytics you can test new tactics and make informed decisions about which activities to keep to help you reach and exceed your digital marketing KPIs.

Below I’ll explain how to set up your free Google Analytics account and give you a brief, yet clear understanding of the four most important Google Analytics report types – Audience, Acquisition, Behaviour and Conversions.

How to Set Up Your Google Analytics Account:

To set up your Google Analytics account simply follow the steps below:

• Create a Gmail email address and sign into your account.
• Visithttp://www.google.com/analytics/
• Click the ‘Start using Google Analytics’ sign up button.
• You will be prompted to fill in the following required details: your name, your website’s name and URL, your time zone and the type of industry your website is built for.
• Select the ‘Get Tracking ID’ button at the end of the page.
• Accept the terms and conditions for using Google Analytics.
• Once you have submitted your information Google will generate a code snippet – simply copy this code and enter it onto every page of your website. How you insert this code depends on the type of CMS (Content Management System) you are using. Consult with your CMS provider to find out the best way to insert code for your particular website.

How to Understand the Main Google Analytics Reports:

Google Analytics allows you to derive a variety of insightful metrics related to your website visitors and their online behaviours, your distribution performance and the amount of conversions you have received. Understanding the four most important report types will help you navigate Google Analytics and uncover the key metrics to help you understand and analyse your digital marketing campaign’s performance.

Audience

The Audience section of Google Analytics helps you find out who your website visitors (or audience) are. It contains a series of reports consisting of a variety of useful audience insights, including demographic information (like age and gender), interests, location and device usage.

Acquisition

The Acquisition section of Google Analytics helps you understand how your audience finds your website and where they originate from, for example this could be through a search engine, social network or website referral. This helps you discover which tactics are driving the most visitors to your website and, therefore, are proving a success.

The Behaviour section of Google Analytics helps you visualise how your website visitors travel from one page of your website to the next. It can also help you understand the pages of your website and blog that keep your audience most engaged – perfect for discovering the types of content and copy that work best for your business.

Conversions

The Conversions section of Google Analytics helps you to define, track and understand the conversions your website has produced. In this section you can track your eCommerce website transactions and the amount of money you have made from various attribution sources, for example, paid search, referral traffic or email. You can also set up goals to help you track other conversions like whitepaper downloads or newsletter sign ups.

This is the final article in the Digital Marketing for Small Businesses series, make sure you look back over each of the 16 articles in this digital marketing series as a step by step guide to understanding the fundamentals of marketing your business online.

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