06 Apr Why Small Business Owners Need Google Analytics for Business

Why Small Business Owners Need Google Analytics

Why Small Business Owners Need Google Analytics

Every penny counts for small businesses. Now more than ever it’s crucial to ensure you’re getting as much bang for your buck in all your expenditures – including digital marketing.

This is where Google Analytics comes in. In short, this free tool is the best way for SMEs to ensure you’re making the most of the time, money and energy you put into digital marketing. It is important to set up Google Analytics early in the website launch process to start collecting data from the beginning. And this article shows you the key ways in which it does that. Briefly, the steps involved in setting up Google Analytics include creating a property, setting up data streams, and configuring tracking codes.

This is not a ‘how to’ article where we walk you through the different features and functions of Google Analytics. Rather, it highlights the ways in which Google Analytics can make your business more profitable.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics helps you understand how people interact with your website. It uses small pieces of code – cookies and tracking codes – to collect information every time someone visits your website. Adding a data stream is crucial to track user interactions effectively.

It then presents that data via a host of analytics and reporting options that can be adapted to your business regardless of size, industry and customer base. It’s a flexible, free tool used by millions of websites around the world. The transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) introduces an event-based tracking model, providing better insights into user behaviour across multiple devices and platforms.

Simply put, if you use a website for marketing and sales, Google Analytics can make you more profitable. Read on to find out how.

Setting Up Your Google Analytics Account

Setting up a Google Analytics account is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few steps. First, you’ll need a Google account. If you don’t already have one, you can easily create it. Once you have your Google account, follow these steps to set up your Google Analytics account:

1. Sign in to Google Analytics.
2. Click on the “Admin” button in the bottom left corner of the page.
3. Select “Create Property” from the dropdown menu.
4. Choose the type of property you want to create, such as a website or app.
5. Enter the required information, including your website’s URL and name.
6. Click “Get Tracking ID” to generate your unique tracking code.

It’s crucial to set up your Google Analytics account correctly to ensure accurate data collection. Double-check your tracking code and follow the instructions carefully to avoid any errors. By doing so, you’ll be well on your way to gaining valuable insights from your Google Analytics data.

How does Google Analytics data enhance your marketing and sales?

There are three key threads through which Google Analytics helps you understand your web traffic and optimise your digital market accordingly by providing actionable insights through AI to predict user behaviour and inform marketing strategies.

1. Acquisition – WHO is visiting your website? Google Analytics helps track and analyse user behaviour throughout the customer journey.
2. Audience – HOW are they getting to your website?
3. Behaviour – WHAT are they doing once they get to your website?

WHO is visiting your website? Gain customer insights.

Google Analytics provides detailed insights into the demographics of your audience. Setting up and managing an analytics property is crucial to enhance advertising insights. This includes basic information such as their age, gender and location. But it also includes more specific data based on their browsing behaviour, such as their interests, job roles and the type of content they respond to.

This data enables you to:

Tailor your content and messaging. For example, if a financial services company found that its audience was mainly older people, it could focus its messaging around retirement or investing, whereas if it was mainly younger people, messaging might focus on saving for a house.

Target your advertising, getting more value from each campaign. Data from Google Analytics enables you to create social ads, search ads and email campaigns that are more precisely targeted based on demographics, job roles or interests. So they’re more likely to resonate with your audience, and therefore increase the number of qualified leads you generate from each digital advertising campaign.

Localise marketing efforts. If Google Analytics reveals high demand from certain geographical areas, you can deploy marketing to expand your reach in those areas. This could include local SEO, targeted ad campaigns, and content related to certain areas.

Knowing who your audience is enables you to make your marketing more relevant and resonant, increasing the likelihood of turning website visitors into loyal customers.

HOW are they getting to your website?

Google Analytics provides comprehensive data on the channels people are using to reach your website, including the volume of traffic, how they behave on your site and how much revenue you’re generating from each channel. Integrating Google Analytics with Google Search Console provides enhanced reporting and insights into organic search traffic, PPC ads, and overall performance in Google search results. It includes all digital channels, including organic search, paid ads, social media, Youtube, email campaigns and referrals from links on other websites. Using Google Tag Manager is one of the methods to add GA4 tags to your website for tracking purposes.

This data enables you to:

• Evaluate marketing channels. Google Analytics shows you which of your channels are fruitful, and which ones are not. You’re then better equipped to make decisions about your marketing. For example, if you’re getting a lot of traffic from all your socials except, say, LinkedIn, you may need to change the style of messaging on that platform, or focus your efforts solely on the platforms that are working.
• Get granular insights: You can dive deeper into the data with Google Analytics to get really sophisticated insights. For example, it not only shows you how many people arrive at your site from each source, but also the conversion rate of each segment. You can use this data to optimise on a granular level. Let’s say the data shows lots of people are clicking your Facebook ad campaign, but not many are going on to make purchases. This could mean ads are not targeting the right people, or the content on your landing pages needs improving.
• Track campaign performance and measure ROI: With data on click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition, Google Analytics makes it easy to precisely measure the return you’re getting from your social advertising and paid search spend, and make the most of your budgets.

Getting a full picture of your digital marketing channels means you can optimise and make improvements across all your channels, and not only attract more people, but more people more likely to buy from you.

WHAT are they doing once they get to your site?

When someone visits your website, Google Analytics tracks their behaviour and provides comprehensive data on everything they do in each session. With the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4, Google Analytics now employs an event-based tracking method, enhancing the way interactions are monitored.

Understanding this data enables you to improve your website and sales process/funnel, which increases your revenue. You can:

• Measure goal completions. Google Analytics tracks specific actions or conversions on their website, such as which pages they view, how long they spend on each page, and any specific actions they complete such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. It is important to configure a referral exclusion list within the Universal Analytics property to correctly track user sessions and maintain accurate marketing channel data.
• Identify weaknesses in your conversion funnels. Google not only measures the number of specific actions on your website, but it also provides data on the steps visitors take before conversion. This enables you to identify barriers and drop-off points within your funnel. For example, people may arrive at your homepage via organic search, then click through to a product page, but then exit your site. This could suggest several things:
• The product page content may not be compelling enough to prompt a purchase.
• The page may be difficult to navigate
• It may be unclear what the product is or who it’s for

Either way, it means you’ve identified a problem and can take steps to improve it.

• Monitor website performance. Google Analytics offers insights into website performance metrics such as page load times, bounce rates, and exit rates. This helps you optimise your website. For example, if bounce rates (exiting a page without any interactions) are high on certain pages, then this indicates where you need to make improvements to keep people engaged.

The insights Google Analytics provides about customer behaviour on your website empower you to make improvements to your site and provide a better experience for visitors, making it more likely that they’ll convert into paying customers.

Understanding Google Analytics Reports

Google Analytics offers a variety of reports that help you understand your website’s performance and user behaviour. These reports are divided into several categories:

• Acquisition Reports: These reports show you how users found your website, including the channels they used, such as organic search, paid advertising, and social media.
• Behaviour Reports: These reports provide insights into how users interact with your website, including the pages they visit and the actions they take.
• Conversion Reports: These reports show you how many users completed specific actions on your website, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

To get the most out of Google Analytics reports, it’s essential to understand the different metrics and dimensions used in each report. Key metrics to focus on include:

• Sessions: The number of times users visited your website.
• Users: The number of unique users who visited your website.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who left your website without taking any further action.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who completed a specific action on your website.

By understanding these reports and metrics, you can gain valuable insights into user behaviour and make data-driven decisions to improve your website’s performance.

Using Google Analytics with Google Ads

Google Analytics and Google Ads are powerful tools that, when used together, can significantly enhance your online marketing campaigns. By linking your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account, you can gain a deeper understanding of user behaviour and optimise your ads for better performance.

To link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Click on the “Admin” button in the bottom left corner of the page.
3. Select “Linked Accounts” from the dropdown menu.
4. Click on “Google Ads” and follow the prompts to link your accounts.

Once your accounts are linked, you can use Google Analytics to track the performance of your Google Ads campaigns. This integration allows you to see how users interact with your website after clicking on your ads, providing you with actionable data to optimise your campaigns. By leveraging the combined power of Google Analytics and Google Ads, you can make data-driven decisions that enhance your marketing efforts and drive better results.

Advanced Features of Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers a range of advanced features that can help you gain deeper insights into user behaviour and optimise your website for better performance. Some of these features include:

• Event Tracking: This feature allows you to track specific actions on your website, such as button clicks or form submissions. By understanding these interactions, you can identify areas for improvement and enhance user experience.
• Goal Tracking: This feature enables you to set specific goals for your website, such as completing a purchase or filling out a form. Tracking these goals helps you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions.
• E-commerce Tracking: This feature allows you to track online sales and revenue on your website. By analysing this data, you can gain insights into your customers’ purchasing behaviour and optimise your sales strategies.

To access these advanced features, follow these steps:

Sign in to your Google Analytics account.

Click on the “Admin” button in the bottom left corner of the page.

Select “Features” from the dropdown menu.

Click on the feature you want to access and follow the prompts to set it up.

By utilising these advanced features, you can gain a deeper understanding of your users’ behaviour and make informed decisions to improve your website’s performance and drive online sales.

Start profiting from Google Analytics today

So, now you know the power of Google Analytics for your small business. Such is the depth and extent of its features and functions that we couldn’t possibly cover it all in one article. But hopefully what you’ve seen here has given you some ideas about how Google Analytics can start bringing a greater return on investment from your digital marketing efforts. 

So what now?

You could carry on not using Google Analytics to its full potential, and risk falling behind your competitors.

You could try to get to grips with the Google Analytics platform yourself. There are free courses and tutorials out there, but learning it all takes many hours, and there will be a lot of trial and error involved in getting it configured just right for your business.

Or, you could get Big Voice to take care of it for you – the most cost-effective way to get digital marketing expertise.

We’re a Milton Keynes digital marketing agency, and experts in helping SMEs get the most out of their marketing budgets. We can configure your Google Analytics data streams and measure goals across all of your marketing channels. If you’re unfamiliar with analytics tools and digital marketing in general, it’s no problem – we’re experts in helping you navigate it. 

As your marketing consultants, we provide strategic advice to business leaders and marketing managers across all industries on how to optimise your marketing efforts and achieve goals within your budget. We support you with complete transparency, so you’ll know exactly how far every penny goes.

Get in touch for an honest and open chat about your business goals and we’ll see how we can help.