Reporting for Success – This Week at Friday Knowledge Share

Here at Coast Digital, we have a long running tradition of the ‘Friday Knowledge Share’. Every Friday morning, one member of staff makes a short presentation to the rest of the company about something of interest from the world of digital, commentary on a relevant current event or presents a case study.

This week Digital Marketing Executive, James Clark, shared what he learnt from a Google Elevenses session on the reports available in Google Analytics and Adwords and how we can use this information to improve the success of our marketing campaigns.

How data can help us succeed

James Clark talked us through a number of ways we can use reporting to optimise our marketing activity. For example:

• Audience reports – where is the opportunity
  By looking at how many sessions it takes for a user to convert, we can make better decisions about our remarketing lists. We can also assess which kinds of users spend more – if a multi session user has a significantly higher average transaction value, then it’s probably worth spending more to acquire them.
• Audience by location – spot international opportunity
  By analysing search volume by country, you can get a view of if there is a market for your product in other countries. By combining this with Google Trends, you can see if that opportunity is just emerging, still growing, or currently shrinking.
• Attribution modelling – proving value
  There are a huge number of attribution models. While last click may be the most common, more intricate models can be useful when looking at multi channel activity. Without the ability to measure assisted conversions, you might mistakenly undervalue certain parts of your digital marketing mix.

The Q & A

At the end of Friday Knowledge Share we always have a Q & A, where other members of the Coast Digital team pose questions or chip in with their experience. Here’s what came out of it this week:

• While last click is the most common attribution model, there is a growing understanding that this model doesn’t give the full picture.
• There are however risks with other attribution models – a full understanding of how channels interact is necessary, otherwise you can massively over-report on what certain channels are achieving.
• The future is in tools that create an attribution model based on both your websites performance and the behaviour of your users.

We’ve got plenty more to share

Want to know more about the work we do here at Coast Digital? Read our case studies to see how we use data to create success stories.