Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
The importance of reports
Performance measurement is crucial for digital marketers. You need to assess and know whether things are going to plan in order to make small adjustments and ensure you’re delivering on your objectives.
The quality of your reports will play a major role here. From an SEO perspective, you’ll be generating reports using Google’s Search Console and Google Analytics. In the case of the former, you’ll mainly be looking at search queries and impression volume, and you’ll also combine that with data from Google Ads and paid search.
In Google Analytics, you can see which landing pages are performing well. You can see data, and generate reports, on user engagement rates, search queries, impression volume, landing pages, time-on-site, and a geographical summary of where our ads are performing particularly well.
By outputting reports in this way, reports that combine metrics from SEO platforms and paid search platforms such as Google Ads, marketers can identify and assess cross-channel performance.
Tracking the customer journey
If you link Google Analytics with Google Ads, for example, you could also pull in the data for revenue and orders, which makes things a lot richer. Now the number of Google Ads-tracked conversions and the number of orders in Analytics may not match due to attribution factors. There are different attribution models at play. The important thing is to stick to one. When you are reporting across many channels, it makes sense to use Google Analytics since it provides a comprehensive overview of data across your marketing campaigns. This allows you to output reports that measure the full customer journey through search marketing, from awareness through to conversion, via ecommerce.
Google Ads-specific data will assist with attribution because it provides richer data on a paid search level. Once you start looking at SEO, Display, and tracking within your website you need to look at Google Analytics instead.
Google Data Studio
There may be potential in using Google Data Studio, which allows users to connect to multiple data sources and create marketing dashboards to share with various stakeholders in the business. It is also free to use, comes with a number of templates, and can be customized to suit a variety of purposes. This is particularly useful if you are dealing with high volumes of data from a number of campaigns.
Example: Air Baltic
For example, Air Baltic combined its data sources in Data Studio and went on to create more than 35 customer reports to share across departments within the organization. This unified approach to reporting increased the speed of decision-making, and improved sales by an impressive 12%.
Back to TopMatthew Santos
Matthew Santos is the Vice President of Products & Strategy at Neil Patel Accel. He initially built the four major product offerings they provide to customers, and continues to oversee three of those: SEO, CRO, and Email Marketing. He has been in the industry for almost 10 years, primarily focused on Earned Media digital tactics.
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Neil Patel
Neil Patel is the co-founder of NP Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.
Brooke Hess
Digital Marketing Strategist and VP of Paid Media (NP Digital)
Brooke Hess is a highly skilled and passionate digital marketer with an extensive background in the paid media space. While leading a team of Directors across strategy, paid social, paid search, and programmatic media, Brooke oversees paid media strategy for priority clients and develops effective strategies for new clients. Brooke is also recognized as a high achiever in providing effective educational opportunities for paid media professionals to ensure they get the most from their paid media strategies.
