Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics

As more and more businesses expand their digital presence, how they market themselves has also gone digital. While there is still utility in advertising in places like magazines and newspapers, it’s more common for marketing professionals to focus their attention on digital spaces.

Analytical tools like Google Analytics enable businesses to understand crucial details about their brand. This tool can help monitor any mentions of a brand, whether these mentions are positive or negative, and how many different people interact with your content or share your posts. Knowing this information is key to understanding how to tailor your marketing campaigns and where to invest your money. Keep reading to learn more about how Google Analytics works and which careers use this innovative tool. 

What Does Google Analytics Do?

Google Analytics is important for any business that wants to improve its marketing strategies and better understand its customer base. Plus, it’s free to use! But before diving into what Google Analytics does, it might be helpful to understand how it works. Essentially, the program adds additional lines of code to your website. This code helps keep track of user behavior when they visit your page. Then, once someone clicks away from your page, all the information collected is sent to the Google Analytics service for analysis. 

It’s important to understand that Google Analytics collects two unique types of data. The first is User Acquisition Data and the second is User Behavior Data. Acquisition data is information about visitors to your site that is gathered before they even visit. This is usually demographic information culled from social media profiles and other Google searches. This information helps businesses understand their key demographics so they know where to target marketing strategies. For instance, if your website is primarily visited by men in their 30s-40s, a smart marketing campaign might include targeting other males in this demographic to reliably expand your customer base. 

Behavior data is collected when people visit your website. This includes things like how many unique users there are, how long they spend on your site, and how many pages they click through before leaving. Knowing how users interact with your site can help you identify areas where users are potentially getting stuck. For example, is there a link to important information that’s located at the bottom of a page and therefore doesn’t get enough visualization? Google Analytics can help identify these potential issues and help your website run smoother. 

Careers That Use Google Analytics

Over 29 million websites use Google Analytics to track their traffic, engagement, and marketing results. This creates a tremendous amount of information that needs to be analyzed, meaning several exciting career opportunities await you once you can implement your knowledge. 

Social Media Strategists are responsible for managing the social media accounts for their clients on multiple platforms. They help design strategies to increase engagement and develop content that is intended to both entice new customers and maintain their existing customer base. Social Media Strategists usually work within a larger marketing team composed of copywriters, graphic designers, and product developers. These professionals can make a salary of nearly $60,000 per year. 

Another interesting career option is becoming a Web Optimization Specialist. These professionals act as stand-ins for users to identify where the user experience can be improved. They make educated recommendations on how to increase traffic to a particular website by analyzing data produced by users who visit the site. In addition to knowing how to leverage programs like Google Analytics, they must also have a solid understanding of digital marketing and web development. Web Optimization Specialists can earn up to $66,000 annually. 

If you’re interested in working closely with a marketing team, becoming a Digital Analyst might be a great fit for you. They help to analyze specific aspects of digital marketing campaigns, like how effective they are and how many people they’ve been able to impact. They use their knowledge of marketing data to help identify trends, opportunities, and weaknesses of current advertising strategies. Digital Analysts make roughly $78,000 per year depending on where they are located. 

Learn Google Analytics With Career Centers

If you’re ready to learn more about this exciting program, Career Centers offers several Google Analytics courses to help take your career to the next level. Regardless of which class you choose, you’ll enjoy small class sizes and meaningful interactions with expert instructors. The Manhattan campus offers in-person learning, but you can also take any of Career Centers’ classes remotely from anywhere in the world! 

For those who want to learn the basics before diving into the deep end, Career Centers has a Google Analytics in a Day course. In six hours, you’ll learn how to interpret reports from Google Analytics and how to gauge the success of a marketing campaign. If a more intensive bootcamp interests you, there are a few options that relate to both Google Analytics and digital marketing in general. Career Centers offers a Google Analytics Bootcamp, Google Ads Bootcamp, and an SEO Bootcamp. All of these are 12-hour courses that are open to beginners in the field. The most comprehensive program is the Digital Marketing Certificate which covers topics like Social Media Marketing, Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Search Engine Optimization.