6 Things Google Analytics Can Tell You About Your Marketing

By Kim Tarasiewicz

At Furia Rubel, we build many of our clients' websites and also provide hosting on a dedicated server. Part of our website services involve checking Google Analytics to see how those sites are performing. An analytics program can provide a bird's eye view of how many visitors are using your site each month, among other things. By defining your parameters in detail, you can even see how many visitors go to a certain page each day, month or quarter. When used properly, Google Analytics can provide crucial information on your customers/clients that can be used in the marketing process throughout the year.

Several of the key metrics we look for when compiling data to share with clients are outlined below. Depending on your marketing and advertising needs, different reports may be more or less important to your business. You will need access to your company's analytics account associated with your website to view your reports.

The traffic report shows the number of visitors to your site, this number should increase or at least remain consistent if your site is performing well. When using analytics properly, you should be able to increase the number of visitors to your site by reviewing behavior on your site and making edits to pages as needed. For example, by checking the "Organic Search Traffic page", you will see the number of visitors that used a search engine and which keywords they used to find the site. You can then incorporate additional related keywords into the site which should increase traffic.

The channel report image above provides a perfect overview to HOW visitors arrived at the site. This area can be used to develop or tweak your marketing plan. If your business determines that they want to increase their social media leads to the website, you can review the current social media number which in this case is very low (0.27%) and after running a social media campaign, check back to see if your percentages have increased, hopefully giving your campaign validation.

Referral traffic is important to evaluate as it shows which outside websites are sending online traffic to your company's website. This could be in the form of a news story that links to your website as part of the story, or it could be a partner company that has a link to your website on their site for referral traffic. It is important to follow-up on these resources, grow your network connections, and promote your company, in order to increase online visitors.


The device overview report will show you from what type of device your clients are accessing your website. On the report example above, 88.49% of these website users are using a desktop computer, perhaps visiting the site as they work. As the number of people accessing your site from a mobile device increase, you should consider building a mobile, responsive version of your website to provide those mobile visitors with content that is optimized to display on small screens.

Reviewing the pages report will show you which pages have the most traffic and have created the most interest. This will give you an idea of what your readers are looking for and allow you to add additional material such as blogs or media stories around that subject, with the goal of increasing traffic to your site.

If your marketing plan is to target certain geographic areas, you may want to review the location report to see what country or which state your viewers are coming from. This report can be narrowed down by clicking on the country, then the state which will eventually show the local towns visitors are in when viewing your site.

Google Analytics can be customized by day and date, locations, new and returning visitors etc. and can be an ideal tool to use in measuring your marketing tactics. Before your team sits down to create next year's goals and plan, do a little research in analytics and give your team cutting edge information to increase opportunities for a successful year.

My Inbox is Exploding

#78767357 / gettyimages.com

By Kim Tarasiewicz

My email is bursting at the seams, and chances are you feel the same way. Whether to their business or personal email address, most people get advertising emails that may no longer be pertinent. At some point, I opted into many of these emails, but as work, clients and life changes, so do your interests and promotional needs.

For example, when my sons were young, they loved to play with K'NEX so I was on the email list for alerts when sales came along. My boys are grown now, so I no longer need toy alerts. But I have to admit, it took me a while to opt out of the emails; it was easier to delete them each month than spend time opting out.

If K'NEX was paying per person on the list, I was wasting their money by remaining on their mailing list. However, as a marketer, I would have suggested that they clean their list of customers like me who had not placed an order for years. Sure, my presence was keeping their mailing list numbers high, but that wasn’t providing them with an accurate snapshot of their target audience.

As a consumer, I suggest:

• Check the privacy policy before you submit your email address to any website. Most websites do not sell your email to others, but some will share your information with affiliates. You might decide not to submit your email address to websites that won't protect it.

• When submitting your email address, look for pre-checked boxes that sign you up for email updates from the company and its partners. Some websites allow you to opt out of receiving these mass emails or at least let you chose which ones you prefer to hear from. There is also a division of the Direct Marketing Association where you can direct what type of mail you would like to receive called DMAChoice.org. 

• Set your email software to automatically filter your emails into folders. Google’s Gmail does this for you and other systems have options in their settings that allow you to sort your emails automatically. This allows you to read them at your leisure, view how many you get from certain companies, and then determine if you’d like to opt out.

As a marketer, I would suggest to clients:

• According to the CAN-SPAM Act, you must provide an opt-out mechanism and it must be available for 30 days after your email is sent. If someone on your mailing list sends a message asking to opt out, you must comply within 10 days. This means every time you send a mailing, you should be running your lists against opt-outs.

• Keep your lists clean. This may mean keeping up with bounces and unsubscribers or proofing the names as you enter them into your master list. Also, you may want to send an email once during the year asking if your customers still wish to be included. Many companies that you can use to send your emails will charge per name on your mailing list; keeping clean lists saves money.

• The Direct Mail Association is a great resource for anyone sending email or snail mail correspondence and they advocate for improving consumer confidence in email. They hold a list called “Do Not Mail” for anyone that may want to opt out of all commercial emails. While it is not a rule, it is a good idea to run your mailing lists against these to prevent potentially offending future clients.

Companies would like to believe that every person on their mailing list reads everything sent out to them, but is that really feasible? Why not focus on your true clients and customers, keep your costs down, and bring in the quality business leads you are really looking for?