Harnessing the Power of Google Analytics for Data-Driven Marketing: Insights and Strategies

Google Analytics is the most comprehensive free web analytics tool available. You can use it to track visitors, evaluate marketing campaigns, and understand your website performance.

The problem with data is that it's not just about having the data; it's about using the data to drive decisions. The amount of information an organization has access to is growing exponentially. 

Remember, If you don't have the data, you're just guessing.

How are you harnessing the full power of the data you have on your customer?

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Are you ready to take massive action in your business and make data-driven decisions? Click the button below and let’s chat 👇🏽

Podcast Transcript:

0:01 Kiva Slade

Hello and welcome to collab with Kiva. I'm your host Kiva, Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing themed office chair. I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a legislative director for a member of Congress, policy director for a nonprofit, stay at home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry biz owner, and now the owner of a service based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line, or full of zigs and zags. Join me and my guest as we share insights, hope in lessons learned from our email entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat? Let's dive in.

0:56

Hello, and welcome to another episode of collab with Kiva.

1:02

I'm your host, Kiva, Slade, and I am excited because we are continuing our measure to march series on data driven marketing. And we've been talking about analytics, we've been talking about the types of analytics, we've talked about quite a few things. And why have we covered these things? Again, because if you are running a business that has any sort of online component, you need to understand the data or analytics that your site is giving you. In addition to that, it's such a huge component as relates to your overall marketing efforts. And you might be wondering, okay, Kiva, I get it, we need this analytics, we need data, yada, yada yadi. Where do I get that from? The answer is Google Analytics. Yep, Google Analytics, which right now, quite honestly, is the the most powerful analytical tool that exist. And so as we look into that, this data that comes in the analytics that comes in, it helps you understand and analyze your customer journey. Which again, let's be realistic, most of us are service providers. And even if we do have products, people are finding us on our websites, or from some media like social, okay, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. So that's how they're coming to us. That's how they're finding us. If you've run a blog, you've got good SEO, someone's typing in best SOPs for small business, and you pop up on page one of Google search. That's another way that people are finding you. So when you pop up on that page one, they're going to your blog posts, oh, wow, this is so informative. I want to talk with this person, how do I book a call and become one of their clients because I need help in this area. So if you're running a business online, you want to have access to this information that Google Analytics can provide for you for your business. But before I get started any further diving any deeper, I need to be super clear with you. Google Analytics is not retroactive. And what do I mean by that? When you're listening to this podcast right now, if Google Analytics is not installed on your website, and you say, Oh, my goodness, I need to go get that put on there. And you look to do that, it will only start recording data once you have it on your website. So what you've done five minutes before now 10 minutes before now, yesterday, last week, last month, last year, will not Google hasn't been dragging it. It's just that it's not there. The same goes for your Facebook pixel Id also not retroactive, even though they're starting to do away with pixels. That's another conversation though, for another day. So if Google Analytics is not installed on your website, I really hit pause, head over to my website, the 516 Collaborative, and book a call so that then you can hit you know, playing it. So Google has recently announced that it will stop sending data to its long standing what's called Universal Analytics, beginning July 1 20. 23 Let's say that date again, July 1 2023. So we are at March 22 2022, when I'm recording this. So within a year and three months, Google will stop sending data to it's Universal Analytics, don't fear because if you know Google, you already know that for two and a half years, they've had Google Analytics four out. And so even though they're sunsetting, Universal Analytics, it means that all of that information will be in Google Analytics for so I'm going to ask you that question.

5:41

Is Google Analytics four on your website? If it isn't, hit pause, hit pause, head on over to my site and book a call with me. You're going to want to have these installed on your website. So what can Google Analytics share with you, that is helpful for just your own better understanding of your customers journey? For example, you can understand where your customers are, whether that's geographically, what kind of devices are they using? One of the big things between Google Analytics Universal Analytics and Google Analytics for is that really when Google Universal Analytics was created, we were on our phones, but we weren't on our phones, if you know what I mean. And so we now have people who might start looking us up on their desktop, and then they have a thought while they're out of the Starbucks. And they're thinking about us again, and they look us up on their phone. And so now we've had this person cross from their desktop to their phone. They're still looking at us. Previously, though, we would have counted their desktop visit their mobile visit. Now we have a better way to keep track as people cross platforms basically, in which to come in find us. So I want to make it clear that when I say that, hey, customers can find you geographically, I do not mean that you will know, oh, these five customers live in zip code bla bla bla bla bla, no, Google Analytics does not keep track of personally identifiable information. Okay. So you will be able to say, okay, my last 10 visitors all came from around the New York City area. Yes. Great. You're not going to say, oh, my gosh, they lived on East 57th. Street, I'm not going to happen. So what else though? Can Google Analytics tell you? It can track which emails are bringing in customers, which ones are not, you can know what specific search terms are like bringing you the most traffic to your website, you can compare your traffic stats with your competitors, you can get reports on your pages that have high bounce rates, you can know which pages have the highest conversion rates as it relates to your website. You can also gauge which social platforms are bringing you the most attention. I like to ask Are they also the ones where you spend the most of your time, sometimes they're don't exactly correlate. You can also see for example, like the greatest source of your visitors or like which sources are sending the highest quality of visitors, because let's be honest, not all of them are going to convert in from a lead to a client. However, if the people who find you via LinkedIn, for example, book calls and become clients at a higher rate than those who find you via Twitter, What's that telling you? And how should you move forward accordingly? Okay, so I want to be super clear. On another point, which is, having this information is not your end goal. And it should not be your end goal.

9:33

This information is needed to help you use this information to move your business forward. Data driven marketing, having the information, collecting it periodically looking at your Google Analytics and saying oh wow, look at that. Ooh, it's so pretty. And that is not the end all be all with this information. So it's critical that that is understood to know that, hey, I have this data, but actually need to use this data in order to devise and decide what will be those next steps that I'm taking in my business. And I'm going to use this data to help me make those next steps. Okay, to help me understand what those next steps should be. And I'll be honest, okay, we're just gonna have some real talk here today. There are times, I've seen YouTube videos and everything else. And people are like, oh, yeah, this is what you can find in Google Analytics. Have you ever been in there, because if you've been into your Google Analytics, you know, and I know, he tracks a whole lot of stuff, like, Oh, my goodness, gracious, goo globs of information. Seriously, information overload. So it's really important that it's one thing to have Google Analytics installed on your site, it's a whole nother to actually know what you should be tracking, okay? Because you need to measure what matters in your business, not just measure everything, thinking all the things are going to paint some picture for you on how you need to march forward in your business. It's not, it can really be overwhelming. There's so much that's out there, there's so many things that you can do so many things that you can track, it really is a lot. And I don't want you falling victim to it was just way too much Kiba, I could just cannot do anything with that it was so many numbers. So many this are so many that. So it's important to know, what your goals are, what are your objectives, making sure that what is being measured is actually the stuff that you need to have measured to understand how to move forward powerfully. In addition to that, though, is this understanding of what does it mean, to have Google Analytics installed on your site? What does that look like? And I think it's important to understand what we'd like to call like, clean data versus dirty to have some data hygiene, that's taking place with your data. You don't want your number skewed because a you're constantly visiting your site in checking something or your team is constantly visiting your site. Okay, we will want to know that in order to we want that lumped in with customers A through J who are coming to our site, because it's gonna feed us some wrong information. And remember, garbage in equals garbage out. So if your Google Analytics is not set up properly, with filters with understanding of what it is that you are looking to measure, you are going to wind up with dirty data. Nobody wants dirty data. So when you tell me that it's installed, and I see you also have Google Tag Manager on your website, yet, it's still not firing and it's producing an error, or there's multiple indications of multiple tag managers being installed. These are things that need to be cleaned up on the back end of your business, in order for you to have good clean data to know how to measure and march forward. And I say that because it happens every single day.

14:26

I see sites that have multiple tag managers and stuff, multiple versions of Universal Analytics, because you thought that she needed more than one setup or someone set up one and you didn't know how to get back into it. So you set up a new one. None of them in many cases are actually being tracked, nor are they linked to any sort of dashboard to give you a visual picture of what is going on. So this is going to be highlighted version, again, of what I've shared. Google Analytics is not retroactive as waiting for you guys to fill that in. Okay? If it's not there, it's not tracking, it just isn't. And it won't go back and collect what you haven't allowed it to collect. Okay? So you're going to say, I've been in business for five years, well, that's five years of data that you're just not going to have sorry, to be the bearer of that bad news. However, just like the tree planting, guess what, the best time to have planted a tree and depending on whose source you listen to, it's five years ago, or 20 years ago, the point being a long time ago, because trees take a while they take a while to grow. They take a while to bear fruit. But the next best time to plant that tree is right now. So if you don't have Google Analytics, and Google Analytics for so you don't have Universal Analytics and Google Analytics for on your website, we need to rectify that. And yes, you can pop on over to Fiverr and get somebody to install it. But your data is not going to be clean, and there's a lot of things you're going to be missing. So head on over to my website, the 516 collaborative.com and book a call. It's free to talk to me for 25 minutes. Okay, you're going to book a call, and we're going to talk through what you have, what you don't have what you wish you had, okay, and how to get you past wishing to actually having okay, because it's not retroactive. And if you have Universal Analytics installed, but you have no idea of what Google Analytics for is Newsflash, July 1 Next year, Google's not going to care that you have not paid attention for the last three and a half years. Sorry, not sorry. Okay, so let's pay attention. Let's move ourselves to that next place that we need to grow in our businesses. And let's make sure that that back in that we have is nice and tidy, collecting what it needs to collect having clean data sources coming in. And we are able to take that information, only the stuff that we actually need to do and have it so that we can use it to make data driven decisions in our businesses. The digital world is not going away people. It just isn't. And I have to chuckle because yesterday, we received a yellow pages in our mailbox. And if you remember from last time, we were talking about the Yellow Pages. And it just really had me chocolate because my first instinct was to toss it in the recycling. Because I'm not going to use. Like, I can't remember the last time I did. That's not to say that somebody else won't use it. My parents might still use theirs, I'm not sure. But even they know how to search online to figure out what it is they're looking for. And you want to be available, findable, reachable for all of those things. So cool analytics, not retroactive. Let's get it installed. Let's get that data and starting to flow so we can make the necessary data driven decisions to propel our businesses forward. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of collab with Kiva. Have an amazing day. Thanks. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of collab with Kiva. You know my heart, and it wants you to know that you are uniquely made and that your business path is unique to you.

19:03

I hope that now you have some clear takeaways from this episode that have left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. If you are a small business owner, and you are ready to build out your business playbook, and you're ready to document and delegate what takes place in your business so it can grow beyond you. Make sure you visit me on my website, the 516 collaborative.com and let's schedule a time to talk. I'll see everyone next time. Bye

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.