Using Google Analytics to measure outcomes against your PR objectives

Is this relevant to you:

·       Are you interested in knowing more about what people do when they see your proactive PR outreach?

·       Do you have a specific goal in mind when you plan an outreach campaign?

·       Does that goal involve some sort of interaction on your web properties?

If the answer is ‘yes’ to even one of these questions you probably use or have someone using Google Analytics to track your users. Alternatively you might be using Adobe Analytics to track responses, which is good as it is more challenging to use than Google Analytics (GA), and so you probably a very competent PR web data analyst.

Regrettably that does not mean GA is easy. At first glance it yields some results but feels like there lots of duplication and unnecessary complication. Please persevere. If you are the right organisation asking the right questions it will help you, a lot.

I am not going to tell you how to open an account, configure settings and all that kind of thing. Get over to GA tutorial area (https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01). Though to go from a standing start to competent will involve quite a few hours.

My intention is to offer some ideas of what GA can do to help a PR person. In particular around objective setting, and goal and conversion measurement.

A PR manager might be wondering if a single person can handle both Twitter and Facebook. And if one gets better results, should it be allocated more resources. To do that you will need data, likely from GA.

Let’s presume there is a PR plan, campaign objectives and a selection of measurable goals. These might be White Paper downloads, contact form leads, additions to a mailing list at the micro end or e-commerce sales at the macro level.

GA will allow you to set up each of these as goals and track the results. GA is quite keen on the concept of ‘valuing’ intangible actions on your site. For some this might be where things get a bit controversial. Now I am no fan of AVE’s, and the like. Setting a value on something like a White Paper download could be like trying to value of Twitter follower. And that was an argument which did not end well!

It would not be correct to value these interactions in the first instance. After a number of campaigns you might be able to make some fairly objective assumptions. Over time you may able to estimate how many of a certain type of interaction results for particular organisations in a sale if there is a tangible linkage.

For example, if you are a B2B provider you will probably have an idea that for every 20 service demonstrations you get a sale. You will know the average sale value and so can estimate the value of a demonstration, hence the value of that type of goal. But it does not work for everything so you must discriminate.

There are a selection of other facets you can check alongside you goal conversions including relative new to returning visitors, if they came by search what term did they search under and what it the general level of satisfaction with your site (bounce rate). There are a selection of attribution models you might consider to understand the progression successful buyers take and where others drop out.

My advice is to become familiar with Google Analytics. PR can benefit from access to web analytics if success is getting people onto a web property.  You really need to hold the keys to this stuff and not rely on other departments.

Thank you for viewing the article and I very much hope you found it interesting. Please don't hesitate to offer a comment, particularly if I get things wrong!  It would also be great if you wanted to subscribe to future blog updates.

Google Analytics Individual Qualification -

Google is a strange organisation. It provides all these free tools but has one product (Adwords) which seems to make all their money. Many of us have been playing with their gadgets and properties over the years. Things like like Trends, Maps and YouTube. I have experimented with early versions of Adwords, Motion Charts, and of course, Analytics.

It is this final Google property which received a revamp almost 2 years ago, this latest version referred to as Universal Analytics. My early plays with Analytics were laced with confusion (on my part) as it did not seem relevant to competitor intelligence, which is core to my interest.

For a number of years Google has been running a Analytics Individual Qualification. Within the past year it has received a revamp, now making it free. It now has to be done in a single 90 minute sitting; no pausing or browser closing to 'stop' time, like before. You are presented with 70 question in turn, with no opportunity to go back at the end. In the screens bottom corners there are an indications of how far (as a percentage) you are through the exam and how long you have left of the 90 minutes.

Why take it? There are other analytics tools you can use to analyse your site and without exception they are easier to use. Google Analytics is difficult but it is the benchmark for tooling needed to gain insight from your site, be it with or without an e-commerce element. 

In preparation I spent time going over the Google course video/dec tutorials and self tests making notes as I went (not that I could read them). This I would say is a must and the most accurate indication of the type of questioning you will face. There also a number of third part testing sites which on the whole were harder than the Google ones. My feeling was as many of these were prepared by named (with links) individuals who were showing off their prowess with Analytics to be difficult not to be disillusioned reader.

How long you take to prepare on how familiar you are with Google Analytics (GA). I would suggest at a minimum you review their tutorials, which would take a good 6-8 hours. I am a slow learner and not terribly familiar with the tool and so spent a week preparing. 

I delayed taking the Exam until I started getting more than 50% of the harder questions right.  The Exam structure is all multiple choice, tick 1 box questions. A large number of the questions have a 'catch all'....all the statements are right or wrong. My feeling was this option seemed to apply an awful lot of the time. That said, I can not be entirely sure as you have no way of knowing if you answered specific questions correctly, it only tells you at the end how many you got right and if you exceeded the 80% pass rate. If I had passed in the upper 90%'s I would know with certainty, but I did not. If you pass your Google Analytics Individual Qualification certificate should appear on your Partners profile within two days

As the Google Analytics course covers a broad selection of topics, I would restate that even if you use GA on a daily basis, I would suggest going over their tutorials. Once you are ready to face the Exam I would suggest diverting the phones, opening a single browser with the exam and another with you resources, a blank browser, cribs notes and help screens like this one which I found really useful..

In case your were wondering, you can not grab the text from an exam questions and insert it into a help page or search engine. I understand if you do pass you can not retake it for a week.

While this would seem relevant to advertising and marketing people, I would strongly recommend PR people consider this qualification. Google is not going away anytime soon and analytics is increasingly becoming a core discipline within PR, and the quest for the linkage between effort and outcome.