If you are a digital marketer or are using digital marketing, then you must have already mastered different skills such as social media, SEO, email marketing, and pay-per-click advertising. If this is the case, then you must be doing quite well and you may be way ahead of people within your industry.
However, you should not just settle on an existing skill set by assuming that what you know is enough. What you notice about the digital world is the fact that there is always something new that can be learnt because technology is dynamic and it keeps on evolving. The expectations of the consumers also keep on changing, meaning that you should never stop learning. If you feel you have learnt enough, then you are in trouble.
It is important to have a skill set that is all round so that you can drive sales and interest and be able to track all results. This is the best way to learn and to improve significantly.
Analytics
This is what makes analytics so important for without them, you cannot tell what is right and what is wrong. If you use email marketing, then analytics can tell you the subject line that is performing better than the other is. You may also know the CTR that a certain offer achieved. Even if you are not on digital marketing, analytics is still needed to see the things that are happening on the website.
You can monitor traffic and their activities when they visit your website. This is the only way you can determine the best thing to do to attract the right traffic and achieve the kind of results that you desire. If you do not have any insight, you may very well be shooting blanks in the air with a blind fold. You may be wasting lots of time, money, and effort on something that is not even working.
By learning web analytics, you can get better at what you do and become even more valuable. There is power in knowing how to find data, identify it, and make an interpretation. This is because you are able to make smarter, better, and cost-effective decisions.
One thing you should note is that web analytics are not all equal. However, Google analytics stands out from the cloud and it is what you should really learn. This is a great analytics tool which can serve well in digital marketing, especially when you know how it needs to be used.
Why it is so critical
Google analytics offers insight that you should have if you are to succeed in the marketing efforts of your digital campaign. With Google analytics, it is easy to tell who is visiting your site, the route they use, the pages they are interested in, and the duration of time they use while on a particular page. There is so much data that you can collect.
It also tells you the marketing channels that are effective. If you focus on SEO, it is very easy to tell whether the content and keywords used on the site is actually attracting people to the website. In addition, if you happen to be using social media for marketing, it becomes so much easier to see the traffic that you are getting from different platforms. Without such insight, you cannot make decisions that are well informed about your efforts and budget.
GA or Google Analytics allows you to notice the areas that need more work. You can easily note the pages that receive the most visitors. The duration that is spent on such a page is also critical. With this information, it becomes easy for you to know what is attracting people to your site in the first place and whether or not the content you are delivering is what they are actually looking for or not.
You may have a site with a lot of traffic, but with a great bounce rate because no one hangs around long enough after clicking on the page. In such a case, you need to re-evaluate the page and see if the bounce rate drops.
Analytics allows you to see the pages that people land on. It is important to note that people do not always visit the home page. Referral and SEO traffic can take people on different parts of your website and you may not be able to control that. This knowledge can help you make the proper improvements to the most popular pages based on how people react on getting there.
Google analytics also help you in determining geographical locations, age groups, and genders of your visitors. This is very useful when you are ad planning. If you get many visitors from a certain location, then you can create ads that target that geographical location.
Boosting your career with Google analytics
If you have a career in digital marketing, it is important to learn GA. This is because you can get so much insight that is invaluable to improve your efforts in marketing.
Employers want marketing professionals who are savvy to make good use of the marketing budgets, which are often limited. They need people who can drive results even in a landscape that is too crowded and competitive. The only way you can get better results is to understand analytics so that you can come up with marketing decisions that are data-driven. It is important to learn as many skills as possible to become effective at what you do.
Any marketing team should have Google analytics knowledge. If there is no one on the staff who has the skill set to handle such things, you should train someone as a matter of urgency. If you do not do that, then it means you have not optimized the marketing efforts to bring the best results and the highest possible return on investment.
The best part is that Google analytics is not that hard to learn. Marketers can acquire the required skills by way of certification while on the job or by themselves. There are various places where such courses are offered and can be accessed.
Category: digital marketing
Keywords: analytics, Google analytics, marketing
Tags: digital marketing, Google analytics, online marketing