Archives for 2017

Do your clients’ find Google Analytics reports difficult to understand?

Is it just people haven’t been taught to read it, not found the right teacher yet??

Let me suggest the difficulty isn’t about teaching (really…) Not about the lack of understanding… At least not in the way you’re probably thinking it is..

To explain… Most people approach analytics the way they’d approach a safe with a key…

They think… Let me test the key. If the key doesn’t fit they go look for a different key. The unspoken assumption is the contents of the safe are valuable…

But Google Analytics (the “safe”) doesn’t magically have gold in it… it reflects what it was told – or more accurately it reflects what it wasn’t told.. the gaps…

You see the underlying problem isn’t that your clients don’t understand their Analytics – it’s that their Analytics doesn’t understand their business.

So the real task isn’t to find the right teacher…. it’s to find someone who can translate their business for Analytics…

Then it’s far easier… they’ve already got the key…  ‘cos they understand their business…

How could we make it much easier for the client’s people to read their Marketing Analytics?

Well.. an excellent strategy is to map the organisation onto the Analytics…

This may sound odd… but stick with me for a bit…

Corporates have an organisation chart.. people in layers – each with particular responsibilities.

So for example John’s the marketing manager for Northern Europe. whilst Claire looks after Southern Europe and other managers look after Middle East and Africa
all of these managers are responsible to the Marketing VP EMEA
and the regional VPs are responsible to VP Global Marketing..

So I’m suggesting the smart approach is to make the Analytics answer questions relevant to a particular level..

So with reporting designed for marketing manager level…answer
How many downloads, signups, occurred in Northern Europe for product A.
how many for product B in Southern Europe and so forth

And then moving up to views for the Regional VPs – We’d be answering…how many conversions were there for a group of similar products happened in EMEA?
how many in APAC ? etc,,

Now, none of us are naive. This doesn’t “just happen”… It takes some serious organisation/ planning. particularly from the mess we can be looking at..

And our experience is creating a working simulation in Google Analytics is really helpful. Making it so people can picture the end result before committing to changing the live GA reports. It can make it much easier to get the political buy in…