Data Makes the World Brighter

Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels

It’s a running joke in my office that “there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day,” (Marr, 2018) and yet we know everything, but nothing about our target audience. Marketers always think they know what their target audience wants and how they act, but people are people and it’s hard to make broad generalizations. With a plethora of tools out there to track data, Google Analytics is useful for websites, except if you’re a new blog with no paid ads driving to your site. Without traffic and time it is hard to determine significant trends, behaviors, or action items from web analytics.

Luckily Google has a Demo Account linked to its official merchandise store. This open source account lets us play around and dig into the various reports Google Analytics has to offer. The first report I wanted to check out was the Demographics Overview. Unfortunately my tiny blog did not have any data here, but Google’s Demo does. 

(Google Analytics - Demographic Overview, 2019)

Unsurprisingly, it shows the ages and gender of users over the past week. This information is interesting. Marketers can use this information to confirm facts about their target audience. What’s cool about most Google Analytics reports is that you can add “Segments” to quickly break down the data even further into manageable chunks. I added two segments that I thought would help shed some light on the audience for this site is: Mobile Traffic, and Converters.

The report then broke out Age and Gender by Mobile Traffic and Conversion. This segmented data is helpful for showing us how a particular audience behaves. In this case, 26.67% of total users were mobile phone visitors. This is surprising given that mobile phones are so prevalent. To check this data, there is a Mobile report, which not only confirmed, but showed 71.64% of users were on desktop and less than 2% on tablet. So as a marketer, now I know who’s actually visiting the site and should tailor the content to be more desktop-friendly and possibly use male colors and psychographic things that make males convert.

Let’s get into the Creepy Stuff

I always tell my clients, “If you are not seeing our paid search ads, then I’m doing my job right, because you are not my target audience” (Kimberly Moy, every damn day). How do I know this? Not because I am a psychic, but because Google has a ton of data about each of our browsing habits. This data is used to create audiences to target with ads. It’s what truly makes the advertising world go around nowadays. If you don’t like it, clear you cookies. I would rather be served an ad that I would find potentially useful, than say an ad for a company that is totally irrelevant.

(Google Analytics - Interest Overview, 2019)

Google Analytics has my favorite creepy report called Interests. This report is not useful for sites that have no paid advertising and do not focus on commerce, but it is still very cool. The report breaks down users by Affinity and In-Market Segment. Affinity audience is interesting because they are people who have interests aligned, but may not be totally aware of the brand. The in-market audience is true potential customers who are “actively researching” and are more likely to convert (Google Ads Help, 2019). The problem is that these categories are very broad, but they provide a good start to a true audience that may convert. Once you segment by age, gender, and location, you can truly target your ad spend.

Diving deeper into Audience > Interests > In-Market Segments Report the data is broken down further into actual users. Adding an additional segment of “Converters,” we can see which Interest segment converted. It is important to set the dates far enough out that you have enough data to draw a conclusion. I set the data three months out and the raw number of transactions increased for various segments, but not necessarily the top three. This will provide more data to help target ads. If a site’s goal is conversion, then Google Analytics Demographic and Interest Reports provide insight into the target audience is and their interests.

References

Analytics Help – Demo Account. (n.d.). Demo Account. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6367342?hl=en

Analytics Help - Demographics and Interests. (n.d.). About Demographics and Interest. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2799357?hl=en&ref_topic=2799375

Google Ads Help (2019, February 4). Difference between Affinity Category and In-Market Segment? Retrieved from https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/1452194?hl=en

Marr, B. (2018, May 21). How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#6dec0eff60ba