How to Use Google Analytics to Shape Your Marketing Strategy

If you’re not already using Google Analytics, this is all about to change. Whatever business or online platform you’re running, Google Analytics is a key resource to help optimize and fine-tune whatever you’re doing.

In terms of marketing, this means everything. By checking through your analytics, you’ll be able to identify the strong points to continue, as well as the weak points to improve, ensuring maximum success.

So, if you’re wondering how to use this handy resource, read on to find out.

Know your traffic channels

The first thing you’ll want to look at is exactly how people are getting to your website. There are plenty of different ways for this to happen, and an essential part of your marketing process is knowing about the different channels. Let’s break down the main traffic sources;

Direct

Comes from users directly accessing your website by typing in the URL domain name, clicking on a bookmark they’ve saved, or via a direct link.

Organic search

This refers to people who have been searching for content relating to your website, and you’ve appeared in the SERPs.

Referral

If your website or link has been embedded into another website and someone has clicked it.

Paid search

If you’ve paid an advertising fee, this shows how many people have clicked through the said advertisement.

Social media

If someone has clicked through to your website or content via a social media platform.

Email

If someone has clicked through a link sent to them via email, whether that was you or one of their private contacts.

It’s important to make sure you know where your traffic sources are coming from so you can see which areas you need to improve, and where you’re getting no return.

Use the 3 key areas of Google Analytics

In addition to how your traffic is coming into your website, there are three other important areas you’re going to want to think about and refer to regularly. Let’s look at them in detail;

Audience

We’ll talk more about the demographics side of things below, but it’s important to realize that this section will help you understand your bounce rates and why your conversion rates are what they are.

Acquisition

Hand in hand with our brief look at traffic channels, the Acquisition section is a great way to see more details on where people are coming from. You’ll be able to see, for example, exactly which social media websites or search engines they’re coming from.

Behavior

The Behavior section is used to help you see how your audience and users are actually using your website. You’ll be able to see which pages they are visiting the most, the total time spent on each page and the bounce rates, etc.

Understand the demographics of your audience

As we mentioned above, the last thing you’ll want to consider is the demographics of your audience. You probably have your ideal buyer or user in mind and using this data means you can figure out how accurate that is.

You can then tweak any future content in terms of topic, style, language, and tone of voice to suit the people who are actually reading your content. Some of the data you’ll have include is;

• Age
• Gender
• Geographical location
• The device they’re using

Monitor the content on your site

It’s essential that you take the time to master your site content, and using your analytics platform, this is easier than ever before. For example, you’ll be able to look at your page views, so you can see how many people are viewing what pages of your content, and therefore what’s the most popular and what’s not.