Top 6 Google Analytics Deep-Dive Recommendations

Ultimately, a deep-dive report measures changes in customer behavior, consideration, and conversion. Metrics are chosen in order to answer why changes are occurring. There are many valuable insights to be had from these reports that serve to validate or adjust campaign strategy and implementation. After analyzing various client data reports, I’ve put together a list of the most common opportunities that present themselves.

Integrate Your Data

First things first, we need to have the right data to analyze. In order to optimize ROI, we have to truly understand the entire customer journey and make attributions to all campaigns, rather than solely giving credit to just last click and first click. If you can’t measure your social campaign ROI and effectiveness then how are you going to maximize it? We often see that companies and organizations overlook where their data is being pulled from and assume that it tells the whole story. These companies have no solid data infrastructure in place to pass the information that they need to measure through their systems. Therefore, a data flow analysis is recommended in order to determine gaps and integrate data.

Focus on Calls to Action

Engagement among social media does not always translate to conversions. It is very common to see high engagement among social media posts but less consideration due to a lack of calls to action. Ultimately, it is important to achieve a careful balance between driving your audience toward your site and engaging them on social. Ensure your conversion points are promoted within both social content and website resource content. Specifically, implement calls to actions primarily on the pages that have a solid conversion track record according to your analytics. While driving users towards your site, ensure that you retain their engagement through compelling content and calls to action. Additionally, monitor the quality of visitors coming from your various traffic sources.

Accurately Track Conversion Points

Accurate goal and event tracking should be a top priority. In order to do this, reviewing opportunities to generate conversions and constructing a plan for how goal and event tracking will be used is essential. Ensure that these are true conversions, accurately reflecting the objective of your company or organization. Are there any opportunities for goals that don’t exist yet, but that we would like to exist? By placing emphasis on structuring goals in Google Analytics that align with your company’s objectives, you can have a better understanding of the areas that are meeting these goals and the areas that need improvement. Opportunities for testing are virtually limitless when accurate tracking is set up.

After you have a solid conversion base set up, you can segment your audience to see what types of people, campaigns, and channels are translating the most to conversions. You can also look at gaps, such as specific goals in which social media followers tend to be converting at a higher or lower rate than all site visitors. This could be an opportunity to highlight these conversions while also driving them to the site locations that are driving the most conversions among the users. Additionally, look at how converters were acquired and how they performed as customers in comparison to other traffic sources. Further, it is always important to optimize for higher conversion rates from social traffic by testing content on your social channels to determine what is driving the most conversions.

Link Tracking

The use of a URL builder can increase the level of accuracy in tracking shared content. In doing this, you have the capability to implement testing across different spectrums in order to determine strategic insights. With link tracking, you have the ability to use hidden fields to pass the data. That means more segmentation and isolation in your testing capabilities.

We recommend running tests on different types of content shared on your various social channels to see what types of content and which social audience is driving higher engagement on your site. Isolate variables while running these tests in order to see what the driving force is. Use those insights to improve upon your existing social strategy. Invest more time and money on what is working and less on what is not working.

Analyze Correlations

We generally see that users who interact with social channels tend to be more engaged on the site, which indicates that users coming to the site that interact with social media tend to be among a higher quality audience that is more aligned with a company’s objective. Further, increases in site engagement among users, unsurprisingly, are primarily correlated with increases in the conversion rate. Engagement on site is determined by session duration, page views per user, returning visits, and bounce rate. When users are more engaged in the content they are viewing, they tend to be likelier to convert. However, it is recommended that you utilize testing by segmenting your audience and isolating variables to come up with a more targeted approach customized to your company or organization.

Target Your Audience

After determining which users are the highest performing, pursue these channels to achieve maximum efficacy. These variables present great opportunity to target your audience with advertising and campaigns and to drive social users more strategically towards site content. Tailor your findings to appropriately suit your unique audiences and optimize conversions. This will set you up for success in any campaign strategy.