One of the best strategies to figure out what is or isn’t working for your business is… Performance tracking. And when it comes to your online efforts, Google Analytics is huge. But this can be used for so much more than just reporting, analyzing, and measuring results.
At Loud Rumor, we use Google Analytics as leverage to get more customers. Find out how below!
Audience Overview
Compare the visitors that you think your website attracts versus who it actually attracts. The Audience Overview in Google Analytics is a great way to see who repeatedly shows interest in your services and whatever it is that you’re blogging about.
So while you may think that your businesses’ ideal client is a female between the age of 20 - 35 who’s interested in health and fitness, Google Analytics may show something else. Here you’ll see the demographics, interests, etc. of people who visit your website with interest in your services or products:
And here’s how this gets you more customers - the information of these visitors can be applied to other aspects of your marketing plan, such as Facebook ads (to set your target audience), prospecting for campaigns (increase your conversion rate by approaching people who you already know are more likely to be interested), building your newsletter list and so on.
Reaching out to the right people and getting super niche with your targeting is the first step to closing conversions - and the Audience Overview section provides that exact information. This allows marketers to rely less on “guesstimating” who their ideal client is because Analytics provides actual data to back this up.
Acquisition Overview
Acquisition Overview breaks down your ongoing marketing efforts including social, AdWords, SEO, and so on. This helps determine what is and is not working, and where to put in more time or money for a marketing plan. So with social, you can see where you get the best results:
In this instance, Facebook proved to be the more dominant social media that consumers visit. It got more than double the sessions and new users than Twitter! This information shows that it’d be a good idea to invest more time engaging, creating ads, or boosting posts on Facebook to get more customers. Running a Facebook campaign would be great because Google Analytics show this as the most successful social media platform (by a lot!).
Site Content
This is a great way to track the performance of any site content that you create like a blog. In Analytics go to behavior overview > site content > all pages. Here you can see which articles on your site bring in the most traffic, have the lowest bounce rate, and that people spend the most time on.
These are the blog articles that are worth investing more in because Analytics shows that they’re already top performers.
To get more clients out of this information, build a campaign in your top blog articles. Campaigns that include opt ins encourage people to convert and invest more in what you offer. This might include a guide or Ebook download, signing up for an upcoming event, investing in a consultation, and so on.
Once you have a campaign built into the article, consider boosting it on Facebook (if that’s where the majority of your traffic comes from for social). This makes sure your top blog articles that already bring in tons of website visits get seen even more, and that larger audience has a better chance of opting into a service that you offer, eventually turning them into a customer!
Goals
Under “Conversions,” you can track actual goal completions. This might be when someone fills out a contact form, downloads an offer, RSVPs to something, etc. You want to monitor these.
To set a goal in Google Analytics, you’ll go to:
Admin > Goals > New Goal > Complete Goal Description (name, type, etc.) > Include Destination ( we usually use a thank you page - this means someone filled something out completely) >Create Goal.
So when someone opts in to your offer, these goals allow you to monitor that progression. Here you get to track the visitor’s funnel, which areas lead to the highest conversion, and so on. If someone converts on your website, this usually makes them a hot lead! Google Analytics helps you keep track of this to increase conversion for more customers.
What other ways do you track performance in Analytics? Let us know in the comments below of any other tips or questions you may have. You can also reach out to our team - we could talk Analytics all day!
Mike Arce is the founder of Loud Rumor, an internet marketing company for small businesses. Loud Rumor focuses on new customer generation through services such as Local SEO, AdWords management, social media marketing, and YouTube advertising. Mike Arce has a passion for helping small businesses grow, which is where Loud Rumor comes in. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.