Login
Start Trial

Category: Analysis

Categories
Analysis Guest Blog Reporting

Four easy ways to generate insights from Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most popular and effective tools for analytics. It offers a wide range of insights, including traffic sources, countries, campaigns, etc. However, it does not allow you to perform advanced analysis on these data. This article explains how to generate valuable insights from Google Analytics.

Use the Google Analytics compare date range feature

A good starting point for getting insights into your digital marketing efforts is to compare two date ranges. Google Analytics has a compare date range feature that allows you to compare data between two different date ranges.

To use the Google Analytics compare date range feature, go to your Google Analytics account and select the report you want to review (e.g. acquisition). You’ll see the date range in the top right-hand corner. Select this box and then tick the “compare to” box. You can then compare your selected period to the previous period (e.g. the last seven days vs the seven days before that), to the same period the year prior, or a custom date range.

If your business is very seasonal, I recommend keeping an eye on the year-on-year trends. That way, you can see how your efforts are helping you to grow your business year on year.

Use annotations in Google Analytics

Annotations are a way to add extra information about your data in Google Analytics. This additional information can help you understand your data better and make better decisions about using it.

If you are reviewing data yearly, it can be challenging to remember what actions you have made throughout the year and when you have made them. If your Analytics report shows a spike in traffic at a specific time, but you’ve not made annotations, you be left scratching your head trying to identify the cause of the traffic. Furthermore, annotations are a great way of adding this extra information in the reports you produce and even better, they allow you to make decisions quickly based, particularly if you are regularly testing new designs with your website.

Create goals in Google Analytics

The Google Analytics website provides many features that can help you understand your visitors. However, if you are an expert in Google Analytics, you may use advanced features like Goals.

While setting up goals can get quite technical, it doesn’t have to be. Start by creating a goal based on visitors reaching a specific page, such as a Thank You page for anyone who signs up for your newsletter.

Setting up goals is relatively straightforward and will add considerable value to the insights you can generate from Google Analytics. To create your first goal, go to settings, scroll to the right-hand column and find the goals option. You’ll see an empty table and above that a red button saying New Goal. Select that.

Follow the steps, making sure to select the most appropriate category for your goal (e.g. choose acquisition for a new subscriber sign up). Then add the criteria for when the goal is met. I like to set simple goals based on users reaching a particular URL. By selecting the URL as a goal, I can add all thank you pages to my Google Analytics goals.

Once your goals are set up, your Analytics will provide a new level of insights that you were previously missing. You’ll be able to identify which channels drive the most goal completions (conversions, sales, media views, etc.). You’ll be able to see the demographics of users who complete your goals. This new data is unlocked and ready for you to use to optimize your website for even more goal completions in the future.

Use DataMyth to generate insights automatically

What could be easier than having an automated analysis of your analytics created for you?

After many hours staring at Google Analytics reports, DataMyth is a godsend. It takes a lot of the work out of monitoring the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. It helps you see how each campaign is performing to improve it. The performance reports are easy to read as the insights are written in plain English.

If you deliver digital marketing projects for your clients, DataMyth will save hours every month by providing practical insights into your client’s website performance. You can easily see which channels perform best because the report will literally tell you in full, written sentences.

Rather than spending hours each month checking several different reports in Google Analytics, run DataMyth and read the report on a short PDF. In a matter of minutes, you’ll have a complete picture of how your website is performing – from top converting landing pages to the devices that bring in the most users. It’s a done for you solution to generating actionable insights in Google Analytics.

Categories
Analysis

Your Objectives Drive Your Google Ads Optimization

Your paid search campaigns can do wonders for you to meet your goals. To see the best result from your Google Ads campaign, it is necessary that you start with an objective in mind. Your objective could either be to drive visibility with impressions or drive demand by generating leads with a form fill. Based on your objective, it is imperative that you select the right KPIs and analyze the data to define your next steps to optimize the campaign.

Brand Awareness:

Brand awareness campaigns aren’t just about driving impressions and traffic to your website – It is about driving relevant impressions and traffic, which reduces the “easy to run-ness” of an awareness campaign. Every impression you get is valuable, so the relevance has to be controlled to ensure that your subsequent KPIs like CTR and clicks aren’t affected.

These are some ways you can control the equality of your traffic:

  • Check the relevance of keywords that drive high impressions. Even though you would have added it to the account, once you have data, check for the volume of impressions v/s its relevance/priority
  • Check the search terms, which basically are the keywords your ad shows up for. This is a great source to weed out irrelevant traffic and identify new keywords. For example, if you have a keyword “Red Shoes” as a phrase match in your account, your ads will show up for ‘buy red shoes’, ‘red shoes movie’, ‘red shoes children’, ‘red shoes no laces’, etc. 
    • If you sell shoes, you wouldn’t want to show up for any keyword related to a movie. As a next step, you will add the term ‘movie’ as a phrase match negative keyword
    • If ‘red shoes no laces’ is relevant to you and the keyword has a search volume, you can add it to your account in phrase or exact match.

Keyword relevance also helps reduce your cost by lowering your CPC as a result of a better quality score.

Lead Generation:

Lead Generation campaigns are pretty tricky to optimize. Clients/stakeholders set objectives to generate leads either at a target CPL (cost per lead) or a monthly lead target or both. So the focus will be on keywords generating leads within the said CPL target. 

There are a few things that can be considered if the CPL is over the target – 

  • Identify keywords with CPLs more than the target (more than 1.5x of the target) & keywords which spend more than 2x of the CPL without generating leads.
  • Check keyword search terms & see if any search terms drive a high cost but no conversion or high CPL search terms. Add them as a negative keyword to reduce the cost down of the keyword
  • Check the keyword CTR. If it is low check the search terms again and identify irrelevant terms and add them as a negative to improve the CTR
  • If the CTR is good (above the account average or industry benchmark), but the Conversion Rate is bad, it translates to a good keyword to ad copy relevance, but the experience on the landing page needs to be fixed. Optimize the content & elements on the landing page. Conduct A/B tests to understand what works for your business.
  • Check the hourly report over a period of time to see if there is a particular time where the spend is high but visitors are not converting. You can schedule your ads based on the performance by hour
  • Check for trends or seasonality which could impact your campaign performance

Steps to consider if the keywords are generating leads at a CPL equal to or less than the target CPL.

  1. Check the ‘Search Term’ report to identify the terms that are generating the leads. If you find any new terms, add it to your keyword list so that your ads appear for this keyword at a higher frequency
  2. Identify the keywords where the competition is doing better using Auction Insights provided in the Google Ads console. You can improve your impression share & absolute positions for those keywords
  3. Check your campaign performance regularly and ensure your position & ads are appearing without any budget or billing related issues

Search Term & Auction Insights reports are very important for campaign optimization. The above steps are the base to start your campaign analysis. Test it out, and let us know if it made a difference to your optimization. To quicken this process to identify the insights, get unlimited access to DataMyth with the Free Trial for 7 days. DataMyth provides insights and analysis with the click of a button.

Categories
Analysis

Google’s ‘Auction Insights’ to Analyze How Competition Can Impact Your Performance

Google Ads is one of the most promising paid channels that delivers ROI. So while you run campaigns, utilizing all or at least most of Google ad’s features will help you gain insights to strengthen your campaign performance. One of these features that is probably not used by a lot of marketers is the ‘Auction Insights’ report. 

While running campaigns on Google Ads, you will come across situations where the  performance changes are not always directly related to the changes made by you as a part of your optimization plan.  The performance could be a result of external factors like seasonal trends, competition, etc.   This is where ‘auction insights’ comes in – You can identify market opportunities by analyzing your competitors who are participating in the auction and make changes to your bids and budgets.

Let’s see how an ‘Auction Insights’ report can help you make strategic decisions & improve campaign performance. The rest of this blog will help you understand and make the most of this report with 4 simple steps.

What is an auction and what will an Auction Insights report contain?

Whenever a user searches on Google, in the background Google runs an auction to choose which advertiser’s ad should be served, and at what position in the sponsored section of the SERP within sub-seconds. Google now provides 5 metrics to help analyze the competitors that rank for a keyword in an auction insight report, specific to Google Search campaigns, and 2 metrics (Impression Share & Overlap Rate) for Google Shopping campaigns.  

Understanding the metrics:

  1. Impression Share – The number of impressions received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. A high percentage here translates to a healthy brand takeover, and a low percentage translates to a high volume of opportunities missed.
  2. Overlap Rate – The number of times your competitor received an impression when your ad was displayed. When the report shows 40% against a competitor, it means that your competitor’s ad was shown 4 times off the 10 times your ad was displayed. 
  3. Position Above Rate – The number of times a competitor’s ad was shown in a higher position than yours, when both of your ads were shown at the same time.
  4. Top of Page Rate – The number of times your ad (or the ad of another participant, depending on which row you’re viewing) was shown at the top of the page, above the unpaid search results.
  5. Outranking Share – The number of times your ad ranked higher in the auction than the competitor’s ad.

Where do you see the Auction Insights Report on Google Ads?

The Auction Insights are available for one or more Keywords, Ad Groups & Campaigns. The Auction Insights report can be selected on the left menu in the Google Ads console. 

What are the questions Auction Insights can help you answer?

  • Who are the competitors competing at the auction? 
    • The report calls out the list of competitors that are a part of the same auction as you, as well as lets you see how active your competitors are.
  • Any new competitors bidding for the same keywords?
    • Comparing different date ranges, you would be able to see if any new competitors are bidding for your keywords. 
  • Any competitors changed their bidding strategy?
    • By looking at the change in Impression Share & Position Above Rate, you will be able to track changes in your competitors bidding & budget strategies. An increase in budget would increase the Impression Share & an increase in bids would increase their ad position on SERP which might improve their Position Above Rate compared to yours. 
  • Which device is the competition concentrating on?
    • With the Device segmentation, you can track the devices your competitors are focusing on. For a keyword or a set of keywords, you would know exactly how the device target has been set & you can optimize your device strategy accordingly.

  • At what time or day the competitors are aggressively bidding?
    • Like device segment, Time segment helps identify when your competitors are aggressive compared to you. Based on this you can optimize your bidding strategy based on when they are active & low. 

Pointers to improve your performance based on Auction Insights:

  1. Increase your campaign daily budget to improve your Impression Share. If you don’t have the room to improve the budget, analyze competitor ads by either searching on Google or use tools like SEMRush. Now based on the information available, identify ways to improve and refine your ad copies.
  2. By increasing your CPCs, you can increase your Top of Page Rate Improving Quality Score would help achieve a lower CPC with a higher Top of Page Rate.

Do monitor this report and you can derive insights and strengthen your strategy and performance.

Categories
Analysis

Data Driven Analysis – 5 Tips to Improve Your Analysis

As a digital marketer, you run campaigns across multiple channels & mediums. You deal with a lot of data on a daily basis and analyze it to identify a pattern or trend based on your optimization tasks which you carried out earlier. Data and analysis go hand in hand to ensure that these campaigns are efficient and effective. According to Gartner, 81% of marketers expect the majority of their decisions to be data-driven by 2020. 76% say that’s already the case. Data is the key to knowing what is working and what is not, so that you can drive faster decision making and deliver the right content/message to your audience at the right time. The tips mentioned in this blog will help you streamline your analysis faster. So here goes!

Tip 1: Analyze the Right Data:

Every channel or medium provides a whole bunch of data, but not everything aligns with your marketing strategy or goal. Pick the right metric that would help achieve your goal and align your marketing metrics from each channel to these metrics. For example, if your goal is to drive visibility you need to drive impressions/views. The next step would be to map the metrics to each channel like – Impressions for Google Search and Views for Facebook & LinkedIn. 

Tip 2: Prioritize Your Data Source:

If you are trying to drive leads and your campaigns are live across multiple channels, start with the channel that is driving a higher volume of leads where-in a minimal effort can drive a higher return. To get to this stage, analyze data from the different sources and prioritize the channels based on metrics like lead volume, CPLs, etc.

Tip 3: Identify What’s Working and What’s Not: 

Now that you have your data by channel and you know what is driving results, dive deeper to understand what drives these results. For example, if Paid Campaigns are driving leads, find out which keyword along with the match type that is working, the position at which you receive the maximum results, the ads driving results etc. Try to find as much as detail you can from campaigns or data available. 

Tip 4: Answer the Why: :

This is a critical step that is generally skipped, but adds a lot of value to your analysis. Now you have identified what is working, along with what is not working, dive deeper to understand the reason. What was that one thing that caused the change in performance. This will help you understand the change required and plan your next step. 

Tip 5: Test New Strategies Based on the Analysis:

If you stop testing or implementing new strategies, your competition can easily overtake you. With deep data analysis, you can test new strategies based on your answer to the ‘WHY’ in Tip 4. Constant optimization will help drive better results over a period of time.

Remember that if your analysis is data-backed, the strategy you recommend will have a positive effect, some, more effective than the others. In the long run, you will gather more and more data and insights about your account making the strategies even stronger.

Are you still manually analyzing report and writing insights?

Try DataMyth, the only digital marketing reporting software with automated analysis & performance insights for a free 7 day trial starting today.

Start Your 7 Day Free Trial