Have you ever tried baking without a recipe? There are a whole lot of ingredients to throw together in just the right way to create something tasty. Using analytics tools is just the same.
Data is great, but if you don’t understand what you’re looking at or how to turn it into actionable insights, it’s as useless as boiled eggs in a batter. The good news is, we’re going to guide you through it. Here’s the summary of the latest episode of the (not) ATYPICAL Real Estate Marketing “Show” on how to use Google Analytics to improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing.
Put the data to work
Unless tech speak is your native tongue, numbers can get really tedious. Remember that understanding data is like having an insider guide to the preferences of your potential clients. On top of that, using Google Analytics to generate monthly reports is a great way to get business stakeholders and investors excited about how marketing is contributing to the overall business goals and objectives.
Sounds great, but where to begin? Our advice is to start by defining your high-level business goals. We're not talking about how many visitors you want to drive to your website or how many social media followers you want. We're talking big picture stuff. The numbers of leads per month, vacancy rates, revenue, new customers, etc. This will require various business stakeholders' involvement but it's worth taking the time upfront to get it right. Once you have these, you can work backward to define the actions that you want people to take on your website that will lead to these business goals being met.
Go configure!
Once you’ve decided on your major business objectives, there are five important things to note when setting up your analytics.
1. Get your lenses right
Views are the way you see your data. Three basic ones need to be set up: Master View, Test View, and Raw Data View. The first will be the main working view, the second serves as a rough draft before application and the third is your backup, the ‘factory setting’ to refer back to if things veer too far off of the original plan.
2. Set your nets
Filters catch extra unwanted information to make sure that you’re getting unadulterated client feedback.
3. Keep tabs
Tracking how your client ‘travels’ across domains and sub domains is very important to understanding your content process. This can be done by setting the cookie domain and updating your referral exclusion list.
4. Tag, you’re it
UTM parameters help to identify clients from a specific campaign. This is great because it reveals the true ROI of your campaigns which can be very rewarding. This gets a tad technical; we recommend watching Skye rap it out on the show.
5. Serve organic
Organic leads are always a better indication of your marketing success than paid campaigns. You can track which organic keywords will bring you traffic by connecting your Google Search Console account with Google Analytics. If you don’t have a Google Search Console Account, you can learn how to set one up here.
These are one of the most important metrics to help you understand the effectiveness of your marketing. Goals are the desired action you would like someone to take on your website.
There are four types of goals that can be set up: destination, duration, pages, and events. When setting up goals, you will be required to provide a monetary value for the completion of that goal. So basically, what is it worth to your company if that goal is completed? This helps to laser focus your intended outcomes even more clearly.
Again, this looks great on a report to business stakeholders and investors because they have hard evidence that their money is being put to measurable use.
Metrics that matter
Two hundred metrics? That’s a bit much. In addition to your monthly metrics (based on your specific business goals), here are our top 10:
Sessions
Sessions by channel
Average session duration
Users
Audience engagement
Bounce rate
Page views by page
Devices/mobile
Goal completions
Funnel visualization
Secret weapons nobody uses
Most people get lost in the 200 metrics available and miss the most important group. Introducing: Multi-Channel Funnel functionality. This shows you the sequence of interactions that a client takes before converting or completing a goal.
For example, someone sees your property ad on LinkedIn, a week later they receive your email newsletter and a few days later they see a social media post. All of this leads to them completing an inquiry form on your website. Every step contributes to the final one, making it important to know them all.
We suggest you start by checking out the Top Conversion Paths report and the Assisted Conversion report. There is a link to learn more about these in this week’s show notes.
It’s all about visualization
Our final gold nugget is this: present your data in a visual report. Not only is it easier to interpret than tabulation, but a pop of color always livens up the numbers.
Two of our favorite platforms are Databox and Google Data Studio. The latter is part of Google Analytics and (the best part) it’s free.
If you’re looking for a premium option, go with Databox. It allows you to pull data from Google Analytics, social media, paid media, your CRM, and many other data sources to build a complete visual of your marketing efforts.
Whew, ok, that’s it for now. If you haven’t yet, CHECK OUT OUR SHOW. It’s jam-packed with lots of good stuff, technical breakdowns, and a dessert recipe. You don’t want to miss it!
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