Unlocking the Power of Google Analytics to Create Successful Media Campaigns

Are you using the full capabilities of Google Analytics 360 to inform your media campaigns? Our Head of Innovation, Charles Farina, recently recorded a webinar, GA 360: Leveraging Google Analytics to Improve Your Media Buy, with Google’s Allison Sullivan. In case you missed the webinar and don’t have time to watch the recorded version (you really should – it’s full of step-by-step tips!), we wanted to give you the TL;DR. So here are six ways to get the most from your GA360 account.

1. Get Connected

The Google Marketing Platform offers a wide array of products that can be used separately but are extremely powerful when connected with one another. When you begin with media activation you typically optimize against clicks, impressions and conversions. However, a lot happens between a click and conversion. Your campaign might have a fantastic click-through rate but not covert. You need to uncover what’s happening in between.

Plugging in Google Analytics 360 allows you to connect what’s occurring on your website or landing page to your cost and conversion data, painting a more accurate picture of user behavior. To make the picture more vibrant, you should connect Campaign Manager, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360 and Google Analytics. (For more information about the differences between the free version of Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360, view the webinar recording.)

These GMP products rely on one another and Google Analytics layers in touchpoints to see the user journey and understand how display is working with other channels, i.e. social, organic, email, etc. — all with the ability to filter on a particular touchpoint or conversion. You no longer have to rely on the last-click model, which doesn’t offer insight into your customers’ behavior. You can prove your media campaigns’ ROI and help inform optimization opportunities as well as provide learnings to apply to other channels.

2. Get to Know Your Audiences

Google Analytics allows you to build audiences with one click and move them directly over into AdWords, where they’re immediately available. You don’t have to wait a week to build a cookie pool or work with IT. You can use it to combine with other audiences, retarget with Search Ads 360 and more.

With the enterprise version of Google Analytics you can also send audiences to the demand-side platform Google Display & Video 360. There, you can execute programmatic display buys and bring your first-party data in as an audience tool to execute against those programmatic buys.

You can see and access all of your audiences in Display & Video 360, including affinities and in-market info. This allows you to find more opportunities for look-a-likes or other users for more campaigns. It can build more audiences off of your first-party audience and combine them with third-party data. And because this is all integrated, everything you execute is fed into Google Analytics 360 and is reportable. These audiences generate data in Google Analytics, connecting media with onsite data to fill in missing user information.

3. Get Your Account Rundown

Understanding if your Google Analytics account is setup correctly is an important step — one you shouldn’t skip. You can audit your account with free tools like ours, which connects Google Data Studio with your Google Analytics instance and changes the connector to help identify issues with your data without granting us access. Common mistakes include not setting up channels correctly and incorrectly implementing tracking codes, which leads to referral issues. There are 10 reports built into the Data Studio Template Report to help you identify errors. Try it and let us know if you have any questions

4. Get Insights with Machine Learning

Google Analytics has built-in machine learning to help power your insights. In your account, click on Insights and Google can identify data trends like decreased conversions, slow page loads and more. It automates what could take hours to accomplish manually.

5. Get Better Results with Google Optimize

A new GMP product, Google Optimize works with Google Ads and Google Analytics to offer tremendous value. It allows you to run A/B and multivariate tests, and excels at personalization and semi-permanent user experiences. It lets you make changes on your website and landing pages and use Google Ads to test and identify signals to adjust experiences. It’s one more way to help close the knowledge gap between clicks and conversions.

6. Get Savvy about BigQuery

Google Analytics in conjunction with BigQuery, a data warehouse with built-in machine learning, can integrate with your CRM data sets to provide insights in seconds, visualize them with Data Studio, and allow you to dig into the information that matters most to your campaigns. Learn more about how BigQuery can impact your campaigns and how to receive a $500 monthly BigQuery credit.

If you want a deeper dive into any of these steps, make sure to watch the on-demand webinar and let us know if you have any questions. We’re always here to help and ensure you’re getting the most from data and your media activations.