In my previous article, I discussed ways to measure and analyze website traffic, engagement and conversions. In this piece, I share seven of my favorite Google Analytics reports that help B2B marketers further analyze and understand website visitors.
1. Geographical report
If you target certain regions or are running advertising campaigns in particular markets, the Geographical (Geo) report will help you analyze how users from these areas behave on your website. B2B marketers can use this data to determine advertising effectiveness and identify needed improvements (specific to each region), as well as compare audiences and segment users for retargeting campaigns. You can even set up your own segments to separate traffic from desired locations and analyze it further.
2. Demographics and Interests report
The Demographics and Interests report also will provide insightful data that can help you better understand website visitors and their behaviors based on attributes like age, gender, affinity categories and in-market segments. To access this data, Google Analytics require additional settings at the property level. Make sure to proactively enable these reports to leverage their insights.
B2B marketers can use the Demographics and Interests report to make sure the content that is being created serves the needs of the targeted audience. For example, you can determine the attributes of visitors who are downloading a white paper, registering for a webinar or requesting a free trial. Demographic data can be used to profile valuable leads and identify new market segments to target.
3. Technology report
One of my favorite reports is the Technology report, which people often overlook. The report shows sessions and engagement metrics by browser and operating systems. This can be very useful when testing lead-generating pages.
With this report, you can understand which browser is most popular among your business buyers and how website behaviors vary based on operating system, and you can diagnose any issues based on specific user technology.
4. Behavior report
The Behavior report is another great asset in Google Analytics that helps marketers demystify website visitors. It offers a New vs. Returning Users report to indicate whether you are reaching new users who do not yet know your brand or are encouraging previous visitors to return.
By segmenting this data by traffic channel, location or device, marketers can understand how a certain campaign performs and whether it performs the way it’s expected to, i.e., bringing in new business buyers or encouraging prospects to return.
5. Engagement report
Another great report is the Engagement report, which shows the number of sessions based on session duration. This can be a very powerful data set when used in combination with audience segments. For example:
# sessions of a certain duration and a visit to a lead-gen page; and
# sessions of a certain duration with a specific lead-gen conversion.
This type of data helps B2B marketers understand what level of engagement is required to generate a lead.
6. Active Users report
This report offers an alternative way of understanding unique visitors to your site. You can filter by active users for one day, seven days, 14 days and 30 days. The last day of your chosen period will determine how active users are reported. For example, if you filter to seven days, the report will include users who actively engaged with the site sometime in the last seven days.
This report can be very insightful when used with customer segments. For example, segmenting by channel will show which channel has delivered the greatest number of unique visitors to your site for your chosen time frame. Segmenting by conversion (You can use the predefined Converters/Non-Converters advanced segments or any custom engagement/conversion segments that you have set up) will show you what percentage of your audience is ready to convert/buy/get involved from the first visit.
This data helps marketers determine how quickly business prospects are likely to engage and convert. Most B2B marketers (especially those offering complex, high-consideration products and services) discover that it takes many days and multiple website visits before a prospect is willing to register and provide contact information.
7. User Explorer report
This report is a great resource for marketers because it helps you understand each website user individually. The insights you can gain from this report are endless.
The report uses the client ID that is assigned to each person who lands on your website via Universal Analytics cookies. The User Explorer report than breaks down, step-by-step, each hit of that user during their session on your website. These include the pages they viewed; the goals and events, if any, that they completed; the traffic channel they came from; time stamp for each hit and so on.
What’s more, you can enable the User ID feature and assign your own user IDs to be reported instead of Google’s client IDs.
How you use this report depends on your unique business and individual marketing campaigns. One suggestion is to analyze the behavior of each website prospect; assign a relevant score to that prospect; and analyze how the score changes over time. This data helps B2B marketers determine if prospects are engaging and becoming more valuable over time. Marketers can test various website engagement efforts to accelerate the value (and increase the score) of prospects over time.
Demystify your audience
Understanding your audience is the most important aspect of any digital marketing effort. Google Analytics offers a wealth of information to understand website visitors and their behaviors, especially when combined with custom advanced segments.
This type of analysis is critical for B2B marketers because of the long, complex nature of many B2B buy cycles. Unleash the power of Google Analytics Audience Reports to understand customers’ needs, create a meaningful and engaging online experience and gain a competitive advantage.
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