Google Analytics + Marketing Automation: How to Get Better Insights About Your Audience. Doesn’t the marketing automation tool provide all that I need?” While you’re asking the marketing automation vs. analytics question, don’t forget your sales or executive team. All that data enables you to build better websites, content, and interactions with users. In addition, marketing automation platforms go beyond your website to incorporate your emails and social media content, too. For example, if you want to determine whether an individual who downloaded your guide is qualified to become a sales lead, you’ll need to know exactly who that person is. Because marketing automation data provides who the specific individual users are, you can match a name with the activity and connect that person to your CRM data, too. This is best accomplished, of course, through integrating Google Analytics, marketing automation, and CRM platforms. Integration also answers ROI questions critical to determining budget and time allocation such as: What online advertising campaigns bring in the sort of leads that most often convert into customers? To truly understand the effects of your marketing efforts, from social media campaign ROI to your site navigation experience, don’t be afraid to look at and integrate all the data available from Google Analytics, marketing automation tools, and customer relationship management software. Want more on content strategy for marketers?
If you are considering a marketing automation tool, you may be pondering: “If we’re paying for a robust marketing automation tool, why do we need a separate web analytics tracking tool? Doesn’t the marketing automation tool provide all that I need?”
While you’re asking the marketing automation vs. analytics question, don’t forget your sales or executive team. They probably want to know how all that marketing data works with the data in their CRM.
Connecting and analyzing data in this multi-device, multi-channel world can leave you feeling like there is simultaneously too much and too little data. The best method to overcoming this data fragmentation issue is to understand what kind of data each platform offers and how it can all work together so you can have a full-circle view of your customer.
By going full circle, you gain the most comprehensive view of how your marketing is performing. All that data enables you to build better websites, content, and interactions with users.
Fundamental differences
Both Google Analytics and marketing automation tools track activity of website visitors by using a snippet of code that engages cookies for users so the site can respond accordingly on their return visits. But what you can track is different.
Google Analytics: All users remain anonymous and contribute to the collective data. Any demographic or socioeconomic data around those users comes from what Google knows about them.
Marketing automation: When users fill out a form on your site, that individual information goes directly into your marketing automation platform data. It puts a name with social profiles and potentially a face with your database. Now, you can track how this individual interacts with every aspect of your marketing from first to last touch, which are primarily top-of-funnel activities. In addition, marketing automation platforms go beyond your website to incorporate your emails and social media content, too.
CRM: This software typically is connected to the sales team. It also is used to track the individual prospect through the sales process but typically focuses on activity in the middle and bottom of the funnel.
TIP: Many marketing automation tools have built-in CRMs or can be connected to the most popular CRMs. Integrating the two enables sales and marketing teams to better communicate. They can see all the data available that helps complete a sale, which helps them understand which leads are good (and why).
How to use anonymous data from Google Analytics
Because Google Analytics is anonymous, it is a wonderful source for big-picture information. You can track your audience without knowing names and dig in to see things such as this:
- Topics people come to your site to find but don’t
- A high-level overview of how well your paid advertising campaign drove traffic to your landing pages and how many converted into leads
- General demographic information, such as age, gender, interests, and geographic location about your landing-page visitors
You can also create custom dimensions within your analytics to tag various posts to see what topics are most popular by learning how long these anonymous visitors stay and what actions they take next.
For a marketer who is trying to build a persona or an editorial calendar, this is awesome…
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