06 Apr Why Small Business Owners Need Google Analytics

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. And this article shows you the key ways in which it does that. 

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.

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. 

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

How does Google Analytics 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.

• Acquisition – WHO is visiting your website?
• Audience – HOW are they getting to your website? 
• Behaviour – WHAT are they doing once they get to your website?

WHO is visiting your website?

Google Analytics provides detailed insights into the demographics of your audience. 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. It includes all digital channels, including organic search, paid ads, social media, Youtube, email campaigns and referrals from links on other websites.

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. 

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.
• 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.

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.