google analytics workshop: five ways analytics make paid search campaigns better

Google Analytics Workshop:

Five Ways Analytics Make Paid Search Campaigns Better

Presented by KeywordFirst

Google AdWords Metrics

• Google AdWords quantifies the basic performance of your digital marketing program and allows you to see conversion rates, opens, clicks, impressions and more.

• These valuable metrics reveal the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts – i.e., showing how you are driving traffic to your website or landing pages.

• But, what happens after those visitors arrive? How do you know if your campaigns have converted prospects to customers?

Why Use Analytics?

Discover the True Performanceof Your Paid Search Campaigns

Analytics packages allow you to track visitor behaviors throughout their visit on your site to understand how well your paid search campaigns are working and which ones

are turning browsers into buyers.

Why Should You Use Google Analytics?

•Why should you use Google Analytics?

• It’s the only free tool.

• It’s tightly integrated with Google AdWords, so it can easily provide a comprehensive view into the performance of your campaign(s) from start to finish.

• Having the Google brand behind your campaign analysis lends instant credibility.

Important Google Analytics Metrics

• Google Analytics provides a lot of information, making it important to focus on some of the most valuable metrics, which include:

Bounce Rate

Average Session Duration

Number of Pages Visited Per Session

Individual Page Performance

Cross-Platform Performance

Important Google Analytics Metrics

Metric 1: Bounce Rate

•The number of visitors who hit your landing page and then left without going anywhere else.

•A high rate is an indicator that you’re either attracting the wrong people with your ad or there is a problem with messaging on your landing page.

Important Google Analytics Metrics

Metric 2: Average Session Duration

•The amount of time someone spends on your site is another good indication of the effectiveness of your campaign, especially if you’re selling a more complex or considered purchase.

•Higher average session durations usually indicate that you’re attracting the right visitors with your ad(s), and they’re engaged with your content.

Important Google Analytics Metrics

Metric 3: Number of Pages Visited Per Session

•Another good measure of how your content or company engages visitors to your site.

•People who are taken to a landing page and then begin looking at other pages on your site are high-value prospects worth pursuing heavily.

Important Google Analytics Metrics

Metric 4: Individual Page Performance

•Google Analytics allows you to track conversion events, such as the number of times visitors download a white paper or click a button to go to a third-party partner’s site.

•This helps you to put a dollar value on each page, so that you can understand which ones should receive more attention (i.e., be the target of more campaigns) and which ones you should eliminate or change.

Important Google Analytics Metrics

Metric 5: Cross-Platform Performance

•Important for businesses involved in omnichannel marketing.

•Google’s Universal Analytics allow you to measure performance across devices to provide a more accurate measure of total campaign performance, especially in the critical conversion phase.

•Allows you to see how well your entire digital marketing campaign is performing and avoid the trap of last-click attribution.

Get a Little Branding Insight Too

• Information gleaned from Google Analytics can also help you improve your branding campaigns all of the way down to the page level.

• Use this data to make more-informed decisions about your budgets, bids, landing pages, ad copy and other program elements.

Maximizing Google Analytics Data

• Google Analytics can provide an overwhelming amount of data.

• It’s important to understand exactly which key performance indicators are driving your business and set up dashboards for tracking and focusing on those metrics.

• The Google Analytics site has a number of great tutorials to help you understand how to best implement it.

Summing Up

• Analytics packages allow you to track visitor behaviors throughout their visit on your site, understand how well your paid search campaigns are working, and discover which ones are turning browsers into buyers.

• Google Analytics is a great choice because it’s free and tightly integrated with Google AdWords, so it can easily provide a comprehensive view into the performance of your campaign(s) from start to finish.

Summing Up (continued)

• Five of the most-valuable Google Analytics metrics include: Bounce Rate

Average Session Duration

Number of Pages Visited per Session

Individual Page Performance

Cross-Platform Performance

• It’s imperative to set up dashboards to track the key performance indicators important to your business so that you don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of data available.

Resources:

Google Analytics article on MarketingProfshttp://bit.ly/PaidSearchSherlock

See “Last-Click” Clutch post on our FirstWord blog:http://bit.ly/LastClickCrutch

Google Analytics tutorialshttp://bit.ly/GoogleAnalyticsTutorials

Contact:Mark Smithhttp://keywordfirst.com/about-us/our-team/

Co-Founder, KeywordFirstMark@KeywordFirst.com