Analyze This!: New Features in Google Analytics

In the 70s people hung out at roller disco rinks wearing bellbottom jeans and big perms. In the 80s they hung out at the arcade, and acid-washed denim was all the rage. Fast forward to 2018 and all the cool kids are wearing morose, Zuckerberg-esque heather grey hoodies, sitting in independent coffee shops, spending their time on Google Analytics.

Okay, maybe not quite. But if you’ve been hanging around in Google Analytics lately, you’ve probably seen a few new things pop up. And while we’d never toot our own horn about how cool we are (*sound of crickets*), we do know a thing or two about Google Analytics. Cool or not, you can never say we’re not helpful, so here’s a quick summary of those new features and how they can make your life easier.

Lifetime Value

No, we’re not talking about the value added to your day-to-day thanks to the Lifetime Network. Lifetime value is one of metrics that helps you better understand your customer, and what they bring to the table. And if you don’t understand your customer, or their lifetime value, how can you expect to sell all those cars? Thankfully, the new Lifetime Value report can be found under the Audience section and can help you measure the lifetime value (LTV) for customers that you acquire through every one of your different marketing channels. For example, you’ll be able to compare the LTV for customers that come from your email campaigns versus your paid traffic sources, or even those brought in through organic search. Ideally, with enough data you would be able to adjust your marketing budget and allocate it proportionally to those channels that bring in the highest value customers.

Cohort Analysis

Also found in the Audience section, the highly vaunted Cohort Analysis Report. Well, maybe it isn’t highly vaunted yet, but just you wait. As of right now the reporting feature is somewhat limited, but you can set up a Cohort Report based on an Acquisition Date, or the first time that a user visits your website. You can choose the report’s size by day, week, or month, and then compare it against any other metric to help determine how a particular group of visitors behave apart from the rest of your website traffic. For example, this may be useful in determining how the people who came to your website as a result of an email blast, or other short-term marketing effort, are behaving compared to the usual suspects.

Audiences

Last but certainly not least is the Audience Report (sensing a theme here?). An Audience Report is essentially a group of users that share a set of common attributes. Maybe for your dealership it’s something specific like new moms, or first-time car buyers—it could also be something broader like all used vehicle buyers, or buyers within a certain time frame. Once you’ve created your audience you can talk to your Online Marketing Manager about incorporating them into your Google Ads strategy, or simply use them in Google Analytics reports to see how they are affected by your marketing efforts.

Want to hang with the cool kids, or at least the ones seeing success with their online marketing? Well, then it’s time to jump into your Google Analytics account and give these new features a try. Of course, the team at Strathcom Media is always willing to help—email us at info@strathcom.com, or talk to your Online Marketing Manager. I may be biased, but I think they’re a pretty swell bunch. The kids still say swell, right?