This document discusses how to mine Google Analytics for marketing insights. It begins with an introduction to why Google Analytics is useful, including that it is fully featured, has a large community, is from Google, and is free. It then covers properly setting up a Google Analytics account, defining web objectives and goals, generating insights from the data, and best practices for analysis. Setting up the account correctly, determining objectives, and asking the right questions of the data are emphasized as keys to obtaining useful insights from Google Analytics.

1. MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS
FOR MARKETING INSIGHTS
Kash Dhanda | President of Ezra Digital
Web: www.EzraDigital.com Email: kash@ezradigital.com Phone: 412-465-0134

2. INTRODUCTION

3. 3MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHY GOOGLE
ANALYTICS?

4. 4MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
REASON #1: FULLY FEATURED
Conversion tracking
Multi-channel attribution
Custom segments
Intelligence events
Real time monitoring
Custom dashboards
Funnel visualization
Custom variables

5. 5MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
REASON #2: THE COMMUNITY

6. 6MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
REASON #3: IT’S GOOGLE

7. 7MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
REASON #4: FREE

8. 8MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH GA
Demonstrate financial value
of marketing
Troubleshoot your website
Track the impact of email
newsletters
Evaluate social media
performance
Automate reporting to save
time
Determine need for
responsive design
Benchmark against your
industry
Follow specific groups of
visitors

9. 9MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
OVERVIEW
The Magic Proper Account
Setup
Generating
Insights
Q&A
1 2 3 4

10. 10MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
THE DASHBOARD

11. 11MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
JARGON
• Visitor = Individual website visitor
• Session = Visit
• Pageview = Each individual page visit
• Segment = Segment of data, not traditional marketing segments
• Conversion = Action being taken
• Bounce rate = % of times a visitor left after seeing only one page

12. THE MAGIC

13. 13MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
DEFINING WEB OBJECTIVES

14. 14MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
DETERMINING YOUR WEB OBJECTIVES
• Why does your website exist?
• What job is your website doing?
• What is of value to the
company?
• Ask other stakeholders

15. 15MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
EXAMPLE OBJECTIVES
Build brand awareness
Showcase portfolio/case
studies to build trust
Move prospects through the
decision funnel
Establish authority or
thought-leadership
Supplemental sales tool
Showcase press and awards
Find and recruit new talent
Nurture relationships with
existing clients

16. 16MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GOALS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS
• Actions/behaviors that are of
value
• Flow from web objectives
• Manually created

17. 17MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
3 EXAMPLE GOALS
1. Branding Websites: Visit Duration
Type: Duration
Can be imprecise, so take with a grain of salt
2. Content Marketing Websites: Pages/Visit
Type: Pages/Screens per Session
Valuable for sites with portfolios and/or a blog
3. Lead Generation Websites: URL Destination
Type: Destination
Track visits to form completion pages/brochure downloads

18. 18MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
SETTING UP GOALS

19. 19MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GOAL TYPES

20. 20MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
DETERMINING FINANCIAL VALUE
• Hypothetical financial
value
• Evaluate how often the
users who complete the
goal become clients
• Use Average Client Size as
a rough guide

21. 21MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
EXAMPLE FINANCIAL VALUE REPORT

22. 22MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
SPLITTING UP TRAFFIC WITH SEGMENTS
• Isolate and analyze subsets of
your overall traffic
• Apply to individual reports
• Don’t change underlying data
• Compare whenever possible

23. 23MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
EXAMPLE DEFAULT SEGMENTS

24. 24MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
CUSTOM SEGMENTS

25. 25MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
SETTING UP CUSTOM SEGMENTS

26. 26MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
RECOMMENDED SEGMENT – BRAND INTEREST

27. 27MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
RECOMMENDED SEGMENT – SERVICE/MARKET

28. 28MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
RECOMMENDED SEGMENT – ENGAGED VISITORS

29. 29MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
INTELLIGENCE EVENTS
• Monitor your website traffic to
detect significant variations
• Automatic Alerts
• Custom Alerts

30. 30MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
VIEWING AUTOMATIC ALERTS

31. 31MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
SETTING UP CUSTOM INTELLIGENCE ALERTS

32. 32MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
3 RECOMMENDED INTELLIGENCE EVENTS
1. Sessions Increases by 20% (Period: Daily)
Pleasant pat-on-the-back
2. Sessions Decreases by 20% (Period: Weekly)
Weekly to account for variability
3. Sessions Equals 0 (Period: Daily)
Site and/or tracking code is down

33. PROPER ACCOUNT SETUP

34. 34MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GETTING AN ACCOUNT

35. 35MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
ADDING OTHER USERS

36. 36MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GETTING YOUR TRACKING CODE

37. 37MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
TRACKING CODE INSTALLATION
• Content Management System
• Wordpress/Drupal/Joomla
Plugins
• Squarespace
• Manual Insertion
• Google Tag Manager

38. 38MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
THE DASHBOARD

39. 39MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GETTING AROUND: MENU SECTIONS

40. 40MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GETTING AROUND: DATE RANGES

41. 41MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GETTING GOOD DATA: TRACKING URLS
• Use Everywhere
• Social media
• Newsletters
• Email signatures
• Referral links
• Case Study links
• URL Builder Tool
• Gaconfig.com/google-
analytics-url-builder

42. 42MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
GETTING GOOD DATA: CAMPAIGN TAGGING
• Parameters
• High Level (ex. Government)
• Type of Source (ex. Email)
• Name of Source (ex. Newsletter)
• Optional Info 1 (ex. September)
• Optional Info 2
• More info:
Annielytics.com/guides/definitive-guide-
campaign-tagging-google-analytics/

43. 43MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
3 COMMON SETUP MISTAKES
1. Not using the “new” Universal Tracking Code
Missing out on useful demographic and interest-based data
Will eventually be discontinued
2. Not turning on Site Search
Get actual Voice of Customer data
3. Not connecting to other Google Services
Adwords for clean campaign data
Webmaster Tools for better keyword/SEO data

44. GENERATING MARKETING INSIGHTS

45. 45MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
THE APPROACH
• Think through digital strategy
• Create a list of questions, the
longer the better
• If you don’t know how to find
the answer, Google is your
friend

46. 46MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
HOW DO VISITORS FIND MY SITE?
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

47. 47MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHAT DO VISITORS DO ON OUR SITE?
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

48. 48MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHAT IS THE BUSINESS IMPACT OF THE
WEBSITE?Conversions > Goals > Overview

49. 49MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK IS BEST?
Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals

50. 50MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHICH PROSPECTS ARE REALLY
INTERESTED?Audience> Technology > Network

51. 51MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
WHAT CONTENT SHOULD WE ADD TO THE SITE?
1. Site Search
Behavior > Site Search > Search Terms
2. Interest Data
Audience > Interests > Overview
3. Top Attention Grabbers
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
4. Behavior Flow
Behavior > Behavior Flow

52. 52MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
OTHER QUESTIONS TO ASK
What is our most effective
content?
Which channels are our unsung
heroes?
What’s the worst content which
causes people to leave?
How do visitors move through
the site?
Does our site work across all
devices and browsers?
What other kinds of things are
my visitors interested in?
What’s the first thing people
see on our site?
Where do we have a
following, geographically?

53. WRAPPING UP

54. 54MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
ANALYSIS BEST PRACTICES
1. Compare trends over time using “Compare Dates”
2. Apply segments to reports whenever possible
3. Report in dollar amounts by adding financial values to goals

55. 55MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
FOR MORE INFORMATION
• Slides available at: ezradigital.com/mining-google-analytics
• Analytics blogs:
Kaushik.net
Annielytics.com
Analytics.blogspot.com
• Other resources:
Google Analytics Youtube channel
Analytics Academy

56. 56MINING GOOGLE ANALYTICS | Ezra Digital
EZRA DIGITAL ANALYTICS PACKAGE
Account setup
Custom dashboard creation
Strategy consultation
Website and account audit
Event tracking
Data-driven design suggestions
Referral spam blocking
Monthly reports

57. Questions?
Web: www.EzraDigital.com Email: kash@ezradigital.com Phone: 412-465-0134