Measuring Social Media Impact with Google Analytics

Measuring Social Media Impact with Google Analytics

Matt AsterManager, Inbound Marketing

Precision Dialogue

Data Attribution

If you’re main KPI for social is revenue in Google Analytics, you’re going to have a bad

time.

Instead, look at overall contribution

Agenda• Best practices for social data in Google Analytics• What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?• Standard reports that include social data• Attribution modeling• Social media impact to website engagement• Online/Offline Reconciliation

10+ years experience in online marketing

Data background from Goodyear & Progressive

Manager, Inbound Marketing at Precision Dialogue, a Forrester ranked Customer Engagement Agency

I create strategies and optimize campaigns by using both new and existing digital techniques.

About Me

@MattAster

Today You Will Learn

• How to accurately measure social media traffic to your website.

• Where to look to determine possible attribution paths.

• A technique for syncing your online data in Google Analytics with your offline CRM (which will ultimately allow 1:1 social mapping)

Agenda• Best practices for social data in Google Analytics• What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?• Standard reports that include social data• Attribution modeling• Online/Offline Reconciliation

Track your URLs

• Utilize UTM tracking– http://bit.ly/GABuilder– Ensure that “social” is in the medium

• Ideally build your own shortener/redirect– Edit links after launch– Insert forgotten parameters

Best Practices (continued)

• Keep your data clean– Remove dev/test– Exclude your IP(s)

• Establish goals (think microconversions)

• Withhold judgment!

Agenda• Best practices for social data in Google Analytics• What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?• Standard reports that include social data• Attribution modeling• Online/Offline Reconciliation

_trackSocial

_trackSocial(network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath)

Useful for seeing total actions taken, that’s about it right now.

http://bit.ly/SocialInteraction (link to documentation in GA help)

Agenda• Best practices for social data in Google Analytics• What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?• Standard reports that include social data• Attribution modeling• Online/Offline Reconciliation

Reports That Include Social Data

Create an Advanced Segment

• If you didn’t set up campaign tracking the way I suggested, you’ll need this regular expression

facebook|twitter|myspace|linkedin|stumbleupon|digg|youtube|flickr|pinterest|etc|etc|etc

• If you did set it up the way I recommended

Use The Advanced Segment

INSIGHTS!

Alerting

Real Time Reporting

Move The Needle

Move The Needle

Go find out your social contribution to your site.

Google Analytics > Conversions > Multi Channel > Top Paths

If you’re ecommerce look at Year over Year difference in revenue.

Discover your Social Contribution

Agenda• Best practices for social data in Google Analytics• What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?• Standard reports that include social data• Attribution modeling• Online/Offline Reconciliation

Attribution is not easy

• Attribution modeling is not easy, but spend some time understanding what’s happening on your site

Conversion Segments in GA

• Build hypotheses and create segments

Agenda• Best practices for social data in Google Analytics• What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?• Standard reports that include social data• Attribution modeling• Online/Offline Reconciliation

What and Why?

• Google Analytics can’t hold any PII– Creative alternative is to insert a unique

identifier into GA as a proxy

• Match your records offline to the data in GA using the unique identifier– If you have offline conversions you’ll know

their traffic source– Begin understanding lifetime value

Rough Schema

Googlecv #AB12

Your Website

CRMID #AB12

Cookie: <deleted>Cookie: <not present>Cookie: ID AB12

Cookie: ID AB12

I’ll explain more in second half

Know your key performance indicators Keep them realistic and actionable

Be realistic with goals and expectations

Data is your friend

Be consistent How you tag How you report Metrics

Key Takeaways

 www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org

Matt.Aster@precisiondialogue.com

@MattAster

Thank You