Google Analytics: Setting Up Your Content Hub to Measure Conversions(Part 1)

DATA ACCURACYDEFINING GOALS SETTING UP CONVERSIONS

Today’s Agenda

01 02 03

Segments of Google Analytics

What are we focusing on in GA?

4 Major Buckets

Who are the people that read my content?

How are these people getting to my site?

What actions did they take that I want to

record

AUDIENCE ACQUISITION

CONVERSIONS

What do they do when they get there?

BEHAVIOR

Understanding and choosing Google Analytics Conversion Goals

01

What is a conversion goal and how do I choose one?

A content marketing goal is a measurable action taken through your content that matters to your

business.

Examples of Content Marketing Goals

LEAD GENERATION

Filling out Blog Subscribe Form

Actions taken that can be tracked back to creating a new lead.

Sales Demo Request Form

New Member Sign Up

TRANSACTIONAL

Purchase on e-commerce site

Actions taken that can result in a free or measurable purchase/transaction

Request for physical collateral

Download / Read White Paper or e-Book

Coupon Redemption

BEHAVIORAL

Visit Product Detail / Pricing Page

Behavior taken by a visitor that has intrinsic value to the company

Visit CSR Page / Site

Move from Content to Corporate

Store Locator search

About Page

Coupon / Discount Program Join

Reading x pieces of content

Watching key video

Sharing content

Content Journey mapping

Mapping your ideal content journey allows you to create

better goals.

Best practice lead journey – Top Down Approach

SUBSCRIPTIONS

PAGEVIEWS

OPPS

LEADS

MQLS

New visitors to Insights content from all channelsGoal is to move this channel to subscribe or sign-up to Insights directly

Newsletter Subscriber & Upsell OpportunityReceives newsletter as normal, but also gets entered into stream to upsell to Insights

Scorable LeadContains enough data to be scored by Everstring

MQLScored by Everstring as A rated lead

OppsRevenue Connected

2%

8%

15%

15%

CONTENT JOURNEY

GOAL TYPE

Measureable action that matters to your businessDifferent brands and content hubs have limitations and identifying a measureable metric that you can track will help lead you to deeper goals.

DEFINE YOUR GOAL

Articulate your content journeyBy creating a visual journey for ideal visitors, you can identify opportunities for creating goals, and success states that will be reportable to your CMO.

Choosing a Goal typeLead generation, transactional, and behavioral goals can all be used to prove your business case or lead you to a process where you can choose deeper goals.

Quick recap about Goal setting

Understanding + Customizing Your Traffic Data

02

What’s wrong with my Google Analytics data?

CONTENT GROUPING

CHANNEL ACCURACY

Knowing who sends you trafficReferral traffic is a powerful indicator of not only the impact of your content, but the sites that are key to growing your business.

REFERRAL TRAFFIC

Breaking your site into segmentsBeing able to view your content on a topical or other grouping level allows you to gain more insight into your content and how to improve it.

Understanding the ways people get to youKnowing your channel sources is key to your strategy. Bad information results in bad strategy.

Google is close, but it’s not exact without context

1. Referral Traffic

CONTENT HUB

REFE

RRAL

Referral Channel Organization

BLOGSPOT

FEEDLY

CORPORATE

YAHOO

REDDIT

CONTENT HUB

REFE

RRAL

The Referral ‘Blind Spot ‘

BLOGSPOT

FEEDLY

CORPORATE

YAHOO

REDDIT

Defining your Traffic Sources Accurately

OWNED

SOCIAL

• Correct use of utms• Identifying email client urlsEMAIL

• Create a channel for owned domains and corporate sites• Understand the value of internal referral

• Separating into Paid & Organic• Identifying custom utms

Channels to focus on

OTHER • Find better buckets for traffic in Other channel• Keep this channel to a minimum

Setting up Content Groupings

Examples of Content Grouping Architecture

BLOG POSTS

Topic 1

Topic 2

Topic 3

Topic 4

HIGH-VALUE CONTENT CONVERSION PAGES

Topic 5

CONTENT HUB

White Papers

Videos

Webinars

Sign Up Page

Coupon Downloads

Contact Us

CONTENT GROUPING

CHANNEL CLEANUP

A clean referral channel gives you powerful data Removing the noise in your referral channel will show you the domains that drive valuable traffic to your site and will help inform your strategy to capitalize on this.

REFERRAL TRAFFIC

Grouping content helps you to understand your content performance betterBy grouping your sections, you’ll be able to use GA to look at the content without the additional noise, as well as viewing it at a granular level.

Accurate channel data will help to inform your distribution strategyCleaning up and creating custom channels will help to build a customized model for your content hub, and will also give you a more accurate picture overall.

Quick recap about channel cleanup

Creating + Measuring Goals03

Setting up a Goal

Google Goal Types

Specific page or group of pages

Set amount of time spent on site

Coded element on the page that receives

action

DESTINATION DURATION

EVENT

Pages visited within a specific session

PAGES/VISIT

Google Goal Types

Specific page or group of pages

Set amount of time spent on site

Coded element on the page that receives

action

DESTINATION DURATION

EVENT

Pages visited within a specific session

PAGES/VISIT

Viewing Goal Results

GOAL FLOW

FUNNEL VISUALIZATION

High-level view of your goals.OVERVIEW

Visualizing the journeys to and from your goal locations

Viewing the conversion rates for complex or multi-step goals

High-impact Goal/Conversion Reports

MULTI-CHANNEL FUNNELS Seeing how multiple channels work together to create goals

Look to your own business KPI’s to find actions that a user can take on your site that you can measure today.

Start with achievable and measureable goals and you’ll have a foundation to build on with additional tools.

Google Analytics is good at identifying traffic sources, but without some context from you, it might be giving you information that lead to a bad strategy.

Clean up your channels and you’ll be able to measure with confidence.

Creating Content Groupings can help you to understand your content better.

Building an understanding ways to analyze goals will help you to see and record behavior that will matter to your CMO.

Knowing how to interpret this data will help you to provide stronger insights into how these goals occurred and which channels to focus on.

Quick Recap

UNDERSTANDING TRAFFICDEFINING GOALS SETTING UP CONVERSIONS

01 02 03

The goal isn’t to be good at content.

The goal is to be good at business by using content.

Thank You!