An editorial by Charleston AMA Director of Marketing, Jenn Simpson
At our last AMA luncheon, we learned how important it is to incorporate Search Engine Marketing strategies into your overall marketing plan. A key component of this strategy and its success – according to our speaker, Steve Parker, co-founder and managing partner of NYC-based Levelwing Media, LLC - is to track and report on your campaigns.
So, the question is which analytics tool should your company or nonprofit use to develop your reports? While there are many options out there available to purchase – some with minor price tags and others with much larger – there is one free tool available, which I believe is suitable for all sizes of companies and for every industry. It’s Google Analytics.
Forrester Research conducted a study earlier this year, “Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics,”which discovered that even 71% of the enterprises interviewed use some sort of free tool for their analytics. The report, which is found on Google’s site, goes on to talk about the value of investing in your resources (staff) as opposed to an expensive analytics tool and how most of the bells and whistles offered through the robust and costly tools are never used.
So whether you are a small nonprofit that just needs basic analytics support or a large corporation which values more detail and segmentation opportunities, Google Analytics could and should be able to fit the bill. I’ve used Google Analytics now for several years at a multi-million dollar public company, a tiny nonprofit and now a large healthcare institution and have never run across an example when I could not find the answer in Analytics.
But, I always love a discussion so let me know why you agree or disagree and which products you use at your office!
Flickr Photos
October 7, 2009
Nice note Jenn – wish we were there for the presentation. I think one of the “minuses” against using Google Analytics is just having to share your data with them.
For instance, if you’re an ecommerce site and Google knows your margins on your AdWords campaign are huge for specific keywords, they could (if they were evil), raise the price on those keywords and eat into your margin.
That’s one example – but I completely agree with your premise that it’s a fine tool for all levels for most marketers.
March 22, 2010
Google Analytics is great for a small business – say the local liquor store or clothing boutique. However, for scaled businesses – say a hospital or health system, a chain of restaurants or a large manufacturing firm we (Levelwing Media) would definitely recommend a more robust too. Many think Google Analytics (GA) is great but with free you get what you are paying for and ultimately “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Food for thought. Some of the most valuable data you can get from a website or any marketing effort are detailed analytics and data mining. Google only scratches that surface.
if you are a large scaled business of any sort and you are using GA then you are under-investing in your ability.