One of the most Important Tools in a Marketer's Toolbox: Google Analytics

Hopefully you've heard of it, but do you know the full potential it unleashes?

Google's goal with Google Analytics is simple: help aid marketers have a better grasp and better understanding of their customers. One of the most exciting features of Google analytics is the fact that it is FREE. Google Analytics gives marketers an easy and accessible problem-solving tool to fully understand the business, help identify what is working and fully understand what isn't and how to fix it.

Before diving in further, it is vital to understand what the concept of analytics even means and how it pertains to marketing. The term analytics literally defined as "the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics." And in layman's terms that essentially means strategically analyzing data. Analytics/data analysis is probably considered to be least the glamorized part of marketing but the foundation it creates can either make or break firm. Market research is a logical first step in attempting to solve a specified marketing problem or pinpoint the exact problem but it is what is done with the data that truly transforms the situation. Google Analytics makes interacting with data so smooth and relatively easy for a profession that doesn't specialize in data or technology.

So what does it do?

It is safe to say that Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for marketers. This tool gives businesses the ability to understand almost any type of interaction users are having on their website and further explain this information with ease.

This is done by:

• Providing information to website owners on how long a user is one each page
• Detailed demographics of users
• Where and how many users exited the site on a certain page aka pain-points
• Reason for click aka Source
• Realtime feeds
• & so much more!

How does it work?

Google analytics places a code on participating websites that gives google the permission to anonymously track customer internet presence while using the participating website. And while this service is free, the tradeoff for Google is that they also learn this information about users.

Lets break it down further:

There are two kinds of data that is collected by Google Analytics: User Acquisition Data and User Behavior Data. The simplest way to put it is that user acquisition data represents who is visiting your website and user behavior data is what they are doing. With user acquisition data, we are able to establish who is using our website. By gauging engagement and interest through user behavior data, we are able to turn data into tangible usable demographic information for further optimization of the understanding of current interested customers and help understand and plan for future interested customers. After getting to know the customer it is important to understand what they do and eventually understand the why. This information breaks down what pages the user visited, how long their visit was, and other links they used while on the site.

The sorting hat of Google Analytics with the five houses:

The data collected by Google Analytics is primarily sorted into five groups:

1. What users are doing in Real Time
2. Who the users are as people aka the Audience
3. How the users came to the website or the Acquisition
4. User Behavior
5. Breakdown of Conversions

Final thoughts, tips & what I have learned thus far:

At the end of the day, it is very important to maximize on the data that is produced, presented and basically handed to us by consumers. Consumers produce so much information and voluntarily as a trade for a service/connivence, and using this information helps us as marketers further our knowledge on our consumers backgrounds especially identifying differences in behavior between ideal and actual self. People are always going to want to be perceived as a more polished version of themselves and its important to be able to identify the differences, and Google Analytics allows us to do this.

Google Analytics for Beginners: was a logical first step for someone with no knowledge on the subject, like myself. This taught me a lot of the foundations of how to navigate the code and what to do with information such as setting up different views, shortcuts and dashboards. Advanced Google Analytics: This section taught me the science behind the data categorization and how to efficiently generate the data that I need. Taking that extra step like creating fillers, and then using them to create targeted ads based on the information gathered. With the Google Merchandise Demo Account, you can continue to deepen your knowledge of the ins and outs of the Google Analytics platform as a whole. Notable to mention that the primary demographic of Google Merchandise Demo is American Males ages 23-34, representing roughly 2/3rds of users.

Before diving into this Google Analytics journey, I had a basic understanding of the existence and even the purpose of the platform, but this deepened my knowledge and helped explain any small questions I had pertaining to it. The level of detail that is combed through is impeccable and helped me really understand the full capabilities that can be accessed at our fingertips. This platform is vital for any marketer to comb through the ridiculous amount of information out there. As consumers we are voluntarily exchanging information for services multiple times a day, and anyone who works with any type of consumer is seriously lagging behind if they aren't maximizing on the information.

The graphic to the left also proves the top dogs in the industry that are currently using Google Analytics, so if it works for them shouldn't it work for all of us? Getting certified in something new or even just learning about it is often a taboo subject, but it is important to us as professionals to continue to grow and learn to keep up with this digital age. I hope I did a good job on selling you on the platform, however if you need some extra persuading check out this website because the author did a phenomenal job breaking it down.