Google Analytics Tutorial for Right-Brained Marketers: 4 Hacks You Didn’t Know

Over 27 million websites across the world use Google Analytics, yet marketers aren’t sure about its full functionalities or potential to drive creative marketing campaigns. In this Google Analytics tutorial, we look at:

• 4 exciting features that you didn’t know Google Analytics comes with
• Actionable steps on making these capabilities work for you
• Why Google Analytics makes perfect sense for the creatively inclined “right-brained” marketer
  
   

As a marketer, you’ve probably used Google Analytics at some point in your career. It’s the go-to platform for websites around the world, and it’s estimated that over 27 million live websites use Google Analytics.

However, Google Analytics has earned a reputation for being complicated and hard to navigate. If you’re a right-brained marketer, with a penchant for the creative side of things, there’s a chance that you’re losing out on the full functionalities of the feature-rich, Google Analytics.

There are plenty of Google Analytics tutorials out there that tell you how to measure traffic and find patterns in website interactions. But is that enough? What do you do with these metrics if you can’t convert them into actionable insights? We compiled this quick Google Analytics tutorial uncovering hidden tips & tricks to make them work in your marketing campaigns.

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Google Analytics Tutorial Hack #1: Stop Looking for High Traffic — Find Your Low-Performing Pages Instead

Often, marketers search for the pages that are bringing in the highest volume of traffic. While this may reaffirm your digital marketing efforts, it is important to look at the low-performing pages. This is among the top utility factors of the Analytics tool and should be part of any Google Analytics tutorial that you decide to implement. Staying informed about low-performing pages can help you to:

• Understand the content ideas aren’t working for your audience and come up with creative alternatives
• Identify poor UI designs or the lack of mobile optimization on certain pages
  
   

How would you then go about finding the lowest ranking pages on Google Analytics?

Click on to the Behavior tab in the main menu and select Exit Pages under Site Content. Interestingly, this doesn’t show the pages with the lowest traffic volumes — instead, you can view the specific points where your customers are choosing to leave the website.

 

Screenshot of the Exit Pages Tab

Once you have identified your “problem pages” go to the In-Page Analytics option under the Behavior tab. Here, you can navigate to the desired page and find out exactly which page elements are registering below-par performance.

Google Analytics Tutorial Hack #2: Set Custom Alerts to Know About Spikes & Dips in Real-Time

You might think that monitoring Google Analytics daily is enough to garner an accurate picture of website performance. However, daily performance tends to be predictable and because so many factors are condensed into a single graph, you’re only just about studying the average.

For example, if users from ten regions are using your website every day, a spike in usage from a certain region will slip under the radar unless you’re looking for it proactively. This is where Intelligence Events come in.

As any effective Google Analytics Tutorial will tell you, Intelligence Events is defined as a specific anomaly from regular traffic patterns. A spike in traffic thanks to positive press coverage or a dip in customers at your target region because of ineffective localized campaigning, are some of the Intelligence Events you can look at. You can even set up an automated email/SMS that will notify you about Intelligence Events in real-time.

To set up an Intelligence Event, follow these steps:

1. In the Intelligence Events tab on the main menu, select Overview
2. Navigate to Custom Alerts (Automatic Alerts are the ones already detected by the Google Analytics platform)
3. Click on New Alert and go on to specify the parameters which will trigger an Event
4. Choose your notification method and Save
   
    

Google Analytics Tutorial Hack #3: Leverage Google Analytics to Inspire Online Content

Following a Google Analytics tutorial to optimize your web content isn’t just about finding your top-performing page and replicating it across the site. Here are three tips to help right-brained marketers find data-driven ideas for content creation:

1. Organize your content into clear buckets such as listicles, how-to guides, and so on. Next, analyze which page is receiving the most traction, leading to genuine conversion — this is the type of content you could invest in.

2. Use the Search Terms report (available under the Behavior tab) to find the exact words and phrases your users are looking for. This will help to SEO-optimize your website.

Screenshot of the Search Terms Tab

3. Organize your keywords, just like you did for content. Are your customers mostly looking for a specific brand? Are they looking to get actionable information? Or are they conducting research, just before making a purchase? Based on your keyword category, you can optimize your site to rank on search engine result pages.

4. Keep an eye on your average bounce rates across pages. This is a good indicator of the fact that it might be time for an end-to-end user interface design revamp.

It’s important to remember that factors other than just content quality, user alignment, and SEO optimization can contribute to high traffic. Take note of outliers such as video content or GIFs when creating content-centered Google Analytics reports.

Google Analytics Tutorial Hack #4: Link Offline Marketing Campaigns to Google Analytics

Did you know that it’s possible to gain visibility into your non-digital marketing efforts — such as print, radio, TV, and direct mail — through Google Analytics?

What most Google Analytics tutorials won’t tell you is that the platform offers seamless integration with a variety of marketing channels, helping you garner a holistic view of website traffic. You can pinpoint exactly where your customers are coming from, reinforcing investments in the right direction.

Let’s say, for example, that you decided to air a product commercial during a late-night talk show. If an impressive traffic volume pours in via that commercial, your product is finding resonance with a very specific audience type.

So how do you go about leveraging this? Start by embedding a CTA into your offline campaigns. This can be a unique URL, shortened for convenience. If the customer is intrigued by your brand, they will visit the URL, which is linked to a specific domain using a URL builder. By looking at the number of customers visiting each domain, you can track the precise origin of this source of traffic.

Learn more: 5 Trends Marketing Analytics Companies Should Be Preparing For

Why Google Analytics Makes Perfect Sense for Right-Brained Marketers

The point of this Google Analytics tutorial is simple: you don’t need great technical skills or deep data science experience to be an Analytics pro. If you’re more creatively inclined and yet eager to expand your Google Analytics skillsets, this is a great way forward. With these four hacks listed in this Google Analytics tutorial, you can add that right mix of error-free data and critical insights to your innovative marketing campaigns.

Remember, Google Analytics can be quite simple and insightful once you get started. Use the app as an assistant and supporting mechanism, refining your vision for your brand with razor-sharp metrics and unwavering focus.

Did this Google Analytics tutorial help you understand the tool better? Is it a part of your marketing schematic? Tell us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.