3 Ways to Use Google Analytics to Power Your Creative
Many businesses underestimate the power of Google Analytics. They often sit with tons of data that they don’t recognise as being extremely valuable. You know when someone says to you, “how can you not eat that, that is the best part!”? I am that person when it comes to web analytics.
LUNIR is approaching a stage where we will be doing various types of promotional content, and in planning this, one of the first sources of guidance we will look to is our analytics tools. While we may have access to several different tools, in this article I want to focus on Google Analytics, as it is available for free to any business. There are so many useful data points in Google Analytics that can help drive the creative for your marketing activities, and for this article I am going to touch on three that I find very useful.
Google Search Query Data
As LUNIR has built up traction, there has been a significant increase in the amount of organic traffic from Google. By integrating Google Search Console to our analytics, we can see what kinds of keywords people are using to find LUNIR’s website. The results are fascinating and, in some cases, quite surprising. As LUNIR is positioned as a digital agency, of course the rankings of LUNIR’s website for “digital agency Luxembourg” are strong. However, the website is also ranking for other terms like “influencer management in Luxembourg”. Yes, we offer influencer strategy services, but these terms are not at the forefront of LUNIR’s messaging, and so this observation gets one thinking about alternative wording for your creative.
Overseeing LUNIR’s growth, I look at these statistics every day to keep up with what is trending and what is worth targeting. You can delve even deeper with keyword search data by setting up your attribution modelling structure effectively, which would help you identify keywords that are more valuable for your company’s revenue growth. For example, if you were selling coffee, you may get many visitors from the search query “Himalayan Mountain Goat Brew”, but the search query “Maple Bacon Coffee Blend” drives more online sales despite having a smaller search volume. In this case it could make sense to generate content that portrays more visuals relating to Maple Bacon Coffee Blend, or perhaps AB test both options with different creative options.
As I mentioned above, there are also other tools available for doing keyword research (in a previous article I described some uses of other analytics tools for these purposes), but a lot of insight can already be gained just from your Google Search data.
Devices
Businesses regularly predict that most of their web traffic comes from mobile, often simply because they have heard about the rise of mobile. However, this is not always the case, and in fact LUNIR receives more desktop traffic than mobile. There are many factors that can impact mobile versus desktop traffic, such as the type of business, country, time of the year, and even lockdowns!
Why is it important to measure these statistics on your analytics, and what does this have to do with creative? In current times, it is extremely important to design and generate content separately for mobile, desktop and other devices, because the user experiences are very different. If you are creating a video ad that you plan to advertise on mobile, then you need to consider how it would look when a user is holding their phone vertically. According to Media Brix, a mobile advertising firm, vertical videos on mobile see a 90% higher completion rate versus horizontal videos. Google Analytics now enables you to monitor cross device statistics, meaning that you can see if users are coming to your website from one device, and then returning at a later stage via a different device. Device data will become more and more important, and as mentioned in my last article about possible marketing channels in the future, designing tailored content for fridges, watches, and even toilets may become a thing!
Demographic & Behavioural Data
It is impressive how much demographic and behavioural data you can get from Google Analytics. You can see your website visitor data by their ages, gender, locations, and what their interests are. Obviously, this can give clear, focused direction to your creative. Going back to the example of the coffee producer, if they know that the bulk of their online orders for Maple Bacon Coffee Blend come from females between the ages of 25 to 34, who are interested in badminton, martinis, sports cars, and live in Limpertsberg, then the creative direction should accommodate this type of persona.
That being said, it is important to analyse the different personas of users coming to your website and then AB test creative to these different audiences to see which performs more effectively over time. Once you have explored your Google Analytics data, it may be worth using other analytics tools to do research about audiences that are not visiting your website, as there may be the opportunity to tap into a different key audience and expand your reach. You could utilise a variety of different tools for this, such as SEO keyword tools, social listening software, or competitor research platforms.
The above are just three examples of how to use Google Analytics to drive creative strategy, but there are many more. I would highly suggest making use of this free resource, and all it will require is to become familiar with the tool and the various metric names. It may be worth attending a workshop on how to make sure your Google Analytics is set up correctly and how to use it effectively, to ensure that you are getting the most benefit from a tool that you already have access to. Get in touch with us if you are interested in knowing more.