How to track a marketing campaign

Marketing campaigns can take several forms. Your business may want to advertise using text ads on search
engine results, banner ads placed on strategic publisher websites, or you may have social media or email
campaigns that communicate your brand and products to customers. It’s common to use a combination of these
marketing activities to drive sales and website conversions.

   

Marketing campaigns are tracked in Google Analytics through “campaign tagging.” Campaign tags are extra
bits of information that you add to the URL links of your online marketing or advertising materials. These
include tracking parameters followed by an equals sign and a single word or hyphenated words that you
designate.

When users click on a link with added parameters, the Google Analytics tracking code will extract the
information from the link and associate that user and their behavior with your marketing campaign. That way,
you can know which people came to your site through your various marketing activities.

For example, the Google Store has a monthly email newsletter it sends to its customers with links back to the
Google Store website. Adding a campaign tag of “email” to these links allows the store to easily identify the
users that came to the website from the email newsletter in Google Analytics.
There are five different campaign tags that help you identify specific information about your campaign
traffic. Medium, Source, and Campaign are required campaign tags. You can also add tags for Content and
Term.

We discussed medium and source when we introduced you to Acquisition reports.

 “Medium” communicates the mechanism, or how you sent your message to the user. You could
include “email” for an email campaign, “cpc” for paid search ads, or “social” for a social network.
 “Source” communicates where the user came from. This could be a specific web page or a link in an
email. Source could also differentiate the type of medium. So if the medium was “cpc” (or “cost per
click” paid traffic), the source might be “google,” “bing,” or “yahoo.” If the medium was “email,” the
source might be “newsletter”.
 “Campaign” can communicate the name of your marketing campaign such as “2015-Back-To-School”
or “2015-Holiday-Sale”.
 “Content” can be used to differentiate versions of a promotion. This is useful when you want to test
which version of an ad or promotion is more effective. If you’re running a test between two different
versions of a newsletter, you might want to label these tags “v1-10dollars-off” and “v2-nopromo” to
help differentiate which newsletter the data is associated with in Google Analytics.
 “Term” is used to identify the keyword for paid search campaigns. You would only use this field if
you are manually tagging a paid search campaign like Bing or Yahoo!. We’ll talk about the best way
to track Google Ads in a later lesson.

To add these parameters into the URLs associated with your ads, Google Analytics provides a tool called
“URL builder” in our Help Center, which we’ll cover next.

Tracking campaigns with URL Builder

To navigate to the URL builder in the Help Center click the link at the end of this lesson and scroll down to the
URL builder form.

In the first step, type in the URL of your website (or where you want your ad or campaign link to take users).
Then fill out fields for the campaign, source, and medium. Optionally, you can fill out the fields for term,
content, and name. Term, content, and name can be any values you want, just make sure that they’re
descriptive enough to recognize when they appear in your Google Analytics reports.
A quick note about naming conventions. Typically, you’ll use single words to name your tags. If you use
phrases, then the URL builder will add underscores between the words to avoid spaces in the URL. Be sure
to use consistent spelling and capitalization when entering tag values. Since Google Analytics is case
sensitive, a campaign named “PROMO1” in all uppercase will show up separately from a campaign named
“promo1” in all lowercase. Also, make sure that you use consistent medium names like “display” for
banner ads and “email” for email campaigns.

When you click “Generate URL” at the bottom, you can see that the URL Builder generates the link with all
the correct campaign parameters attached.
This provides an easy way to quickly generate campaign tags for tracking. But keep in mind, you can only use
it to build out one URL at a time, so you probably won’t want to use it to build each URL if you have a large
campaign. Instead, you can use a spreadsheet to simplify the process. We’ve provided an example template at
the end of this lesson that you can use to manage your campaign values for bulk URL-building.

Before launching a campaign with this link, you’ll want to verify that your tracking tags are working correctly.
Sometimes a website configuration can break Google Analytics Campaign tracking. Here's a simple way to test
your campaign before you launch it. First open an incognito window or private browsing session. Then, copy
and paste the link you created to track your campaign into the address bar of the browser. Once your website
loads, navigate around your site and complete some of the critical actions. For example, if one of your website
objectives is a trial signup, complete the signup process on your site. Or, if your campaign contains a coupon,
try submitting a transaction with the coupon applied.
It’s a good idea to try this with each URL you created. You can instantly see campaign information in the Real
Time reports or wait a few hours to review the data in your standard Campaign reports. Then visit the “All
Campaigns” report in the “Acquisition” section under “Campaigns.” This report lets you compare incoming
traffic from your various marketing campaigns. To verify that the campaign is collecting data properly, type
the name of the campaign into the filter. You should see an overview of the campaign clicks that you tested.

If you click on the campaign name, you can see the source and medium data that you entered into the URL
Builder. If you want to verify the other campaign tags you added to your URL, add a secondary dimension
such as “ad content.”
This lets you view the primary dimension of “Source/Medium” broken down by the “content” tag you added to
your links. The Google Store differentiated the “content” tag for their email newsletters by whether they were
offering promotions or not. By adding the secondary dimension of “Ad Content,” we can see which
promotions were most effective at driving people to the website.

There are many other ways to analyze campaign data, which we’ll cover in an advanced course. Using the
URL Builder in conjunction with Google Analytics reporting, you can quickly understand which campaigns
drove the highest quality traffic to your site.

How to set up Goals in Analytics

Before we set up a goal in Google Analytics, let’s draw a distinction between two types of goals:
business goals and Google Analytics Goals.

Business goals are actions you want your user to take on your website. Each time a user
completes one of your business goals, we call this a “conversion.” This could be signing up for a
newsletter or buying a product.

But in Google Analytics, you use a feature called “Goals” to track these conversions. Once you
configure Goals, Analytics will create conversion-related metrics. like the total number of
conversions, as well as the percentage of users that converted. We refer to this as the “conversion
rate.”

When you set up a Goal in Google Analytics, you can also set up a “goal funnel.” This is a data
visualization of the different steps needed to complete the goal. This visual helps you identify
where users are dropping out of the conversion process. Ecommerce businesses could use goals
and funnels to see whether users are able to complete a multi-step checkout process. Other
businesses could track newsletter sign-ups, contact form completions, page navigations, number
of pages viewed in a session, or time on site.
You must be an Administrator on the View in which you want to enable Goals in Analytics. Also
note that you can only set up to 20 goals per view, so be thoughtful about which goals are most
important to your business.

First, you’ll need to decide what you want to track based on your business goals. Since The
Google Store is an ecommerce store, one goal they could track is successful checkouts. So, let’s
set up a goal every time a user reaches the checkout confirmation page. We’ll also set up a
funnel visualization, so we can see if users are dropping off on their way to the confirmation
page. Note that this Goal won’t track actual revenue; it will simply track how far users get at
each stage of the goal and where they might abandon the process. Creating a funnel visualization
to track goal completions is completely optional, but it can add a lot of visibility into each step of
the conversion flow.

Goal Setup

To get started, we’ll go into the Admin section. Then, under “Views,” we’ll click “Goals.” Then
we’ll click “New Goal.” Note that your Goal set-up may look a little different than the one for
The Google Store, depending on your business type. Analytics provides you with some pre-set
business goal templates. Since we want to track whether users made it to the checkout page for
The Google Store, we’ll choose “Buy merchandise” and click “Continue.”

Because we want to track checkout confirmations, we’ll name the goal: “Checkout Complete.”
Each goal uses a particular “Goal Slot ID” that are numbered from one to twenty. The Goal Slot
ID is a simple way to organize your goals. The default slot will always be the next slot available.
If you’re creating your first goal, the Goal Slot ID will be “1,” but you can choose a different slot
if you have certain goals that you wish to group together.
Next we’ll choose one of four Goal types. Each of these types is triggered by a particular user
action.

 “Destination” is when a user reaches a specific page on your site such as a thank-you
page;
 “Duration,” is based on the length of a user’s session;
 “Pages or Screens” is based on how many pages a user views in a session;
 “Events,” is for tracking specific actions on a site. We’ll cover events more broadly in an
advanced course.

Note that if you want to create a Funnel Visualization, you can only use the “Destination”-type
goal, so we’ll select “Destination” and click “Continue.”

Next, we’ll enter the destination URL of the “Order Complete” page in the “Destination” field.
The destination URL is the URL of the page that is shown when the user converts or completes
the conversion process. Rather than enter the entire URL, we want to look for something
distinctive in that URL that will allow us to track our goal using only this page. Since none of the
other web pages in the Google Store have “SubmitOrder” in the URL, we’ll use this to identify
our “Order Complete” page.

You’ll notice that if we select “Equals to,” type “forward-slash SubmitOrder,” and click “Verify”
at the bottom, we don’t see any conversion data for this goal. This is because the SubmitOrder
page is part of a longer dynamic URL. In order to track this goal, we’ll actually need to use
what’s called a “regular expression” and enter the value “forward slash SubmitOrder” to indicate
that the URL preceding it can be variable. Now if we click “Re-verify,” we can see that the
conversion rate is above 0, which means we’ll be able to track data. We’ll cover regular
expressions more in an advanced Analytics course.

Goal Value

If you want to assign a monetary amount to the conversion goal, you can flip the “Value” toggle
to “On” and type in the amount that each conversion is worth. You would only use this if each
conversion was worth a consistent amount to your business. For example, if each newsletter
sign-up was worth 1 dollar to your business, you could set a goal value equal to “1.” Since we’re
tracking Google Store order completions and each order is a different amount, we’ll leave this
Value set to “Off” for now. If we wanted to track actual revenue made from purchases, we would
need to turn on ecommerce tracking, which we discuss in our Ecommerce Analytics course.

Goal Funnel

Once you’ve verified your settings, flip the Funnel switch to “On” to add the funnel steps. Each
funnel step represents an action on your website that needs to be taken in order to accomplish the
Goal. In this case, we’ll need to include a unique part of the URL for each page the user has to
view in order to check out and make a purchase. We can name each step in our funnel and add
the unique part of the URL. If a step is required to complete the goal, move the “Required”
toggle to “Yes.” For example, if we only wanted users who entered the funnel on the first step to
show up in our funnel visualization report, we could set the first step to required.
Note that the Goal completion numbers in the Conversions report will not be affected by the
funnel you’ve set up, even if you’ve made some of the steps required, as these steps are only
reported in the funnel visualization report.

Once you click Save, you’ll see the Goal appear in the Goals list.

To see your Goal metrics, navigate back into the Reporting view and under the “Conversions”
reports, click “Goals” and then “Overview.” More importantly, you can now view goal data in
almost all of your other Google Analytics reports like the Audience and Acquisition reports.

To see the related funnel visualization, under Conversions, click the Funnel Visualization report.
Scrolling down, you can see user activity in each step of the funnel and how many users
proceeded through each step. If you see users dropping off dramatically in a particular step, you
may want to investigate further. There could be technical issues with this stage of the funnel,
preventing users from proceeding.

In addition to creating your own custom goals, the Analytics Solutions Gallery offers many
Goals built by other users that you can add to your Analytics account to use for your own
business purposes.

How to use Analytics with Google Ads

Google Ads is Google’s advertising system that allows businesses to generate text and display ads. Text ads
show up next to Google search results by matching keywords you can bid on with users’ search queries.
Display ads are advertisements consisting of text, images, animation, or video that show up on a vast collection
of websites called the Google Display Network.

Since the Google Store wants to sell t-shirts, they could bid on keywords such as “Google t-shirt” and “Google
clothing.” When people search Google for a particular product like “a really cool Google t-shirt,” Google Ads
will show a relevant text ad for the Google Store if the ad meets Google Ad's quality guidelines. This type of
advertising can help attract customers from the millions that use Google Search and the Display Network every
day.

When you link your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account, you can:

 view Google Ads click and cost data alongside your site engagement data in Google Analytics;
 create remarketing lists in Analytics to use in Google Ads campaigns;
 import Analytics goals and transactions into Google Ads as conversions;
 and view Analytics site engagement data in Google Ads.

To set up a Google Ads account, navigate to the link at the end of this lesson and follow the instructions to
create an account. It should take less than twenty minutes.
To link Google Analytics with Google Ads, first make sure you are logged into Analytics using the same email
as your Google Ads account. You can find the email you’re signed in with in the upper right-hand corner. Note
that you must be an administrator on both accounts.

Next, click the Admin tab. Then make sure you’ve selected the account and the property you wish to link to
your Google Ads account. Under the Property section, select “Google Ads linking.” Click the button “New
link group.” Any Google Ads accounts you have linked to your Google account will automatically appear.
Check which account you wish to link and click “continue.” Next, type in a “Link Group Title.” This could be
your Google Ads account ID.

Now select the view in which you want the Google Ads data to appear and select “Link accounts.” The linked
account will show in your Link group list with the title you entered.
Auto-tagging

When you link your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, campaign data is shared between the two
systems, but it still requires campaign tracking. Although you can manually add campaign tracking tags to
Google Ads URLs using the URL Builder as we did earlier, there is a better option. Google Ads can
automatically add a special campaign tag to your Google Ads URLs through a feature called auto-tagging.
Auto tagging is required to get specific Google Ads dimensions into Google Analytics. These are some of the
Google Ads dimensions available:

 Query match type shows how a Google Ads keyword is matched to a user search query.
 Ad Group shows the ad group associated with the keyword/creative and click.
 Destination URL shows the Google Ads destination URL configured in your Google Ads ads.
 Ad Format describes whether the ad is a text ad, display ad, or video.
 Ad Distribution Network shows the network used to deliver your ad.
 Placement Domain is the domain on the content network where your ad was displayed.
 And Google Ads Customer ID is the unique ID assigned to your Google Ads account.

All of this data can help you better analyze the performance of your Google Ads campaigns. For example, you
can quickly compare the performance of different ad formats using the Ad Format dimension. You can also
fine-tune your keyword matching strategy by analyzing the performance of your keywords based on their
match type. Note that these additional dimensions and reporting features are only available when you link your
Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts.

Once we have linked Google Ads with Analytics, we can find Google Ads reports under “Acquisition” in the
left-hand navigation.

Campaigns

If we click on the “Campaigns” report, we can see how well our various Google Ads campaigns are
performing. Notice that this report organizes Google Ads campaigns using the names assigned in Google Ads.
This is one of the benefits of linking Google Ads with Analytics.
Note at the top of the report you can switch between desktop, mobile, and tablet metrics to view the
performance of campaigns across different devices. In the data table below, you can use the Acquisition
metrics to see how the clicks for each campaign and the total amount paid for those clicks. CPC shows the
average cost for each click. Under Behavior, you can see user engagement for each campaign. And under
Conversions, you can see the conversion rate, the number of actual goal completions, and how much these
conversions were ultimately worth to your business for each Google Ads campaign using the pulldown menu.

Keywords

Now let’s look at the “Keywords” report. This can help you understand how well keywords and individual ads
are performing. For example, if a keyword is bringing in a lot of traffic but has a high bounce rate, it might
indicate a disconnect between the ad and landing page content. If you have a keyword with a high conversion
rate but low number of impressions (or number of times an ad was shown), you may want to raise your bid for
that keyword, so the ad is shown more often and reaches a larger audience. You could also add “Device
Category” as a secondary dimension to break out these keywords by the kinds of devices that users were on
when they clicked your ad and visited your site.
Bid adjustments

Finally, let’s look at the “Bid adjustments” report. Bid adjustments are a Google Ads feature used to
automatically adjust keyword bids based on a user’s device, location, or time of day. For example, if the
Google Store opens a temporary location during the holidays to sell merchandise, they might want to add a bid
adjustment to increase ad visibility on mobile devices within three miles of the store during the hours of
operation.

The Bid Adjustment report in Analytics lets you analyze Google Ads performance for the bid adjustments
you've set for your campaigns. You can use the selector at the top of the table to evaluate campaign
performance by the device, location, time of day, and remarketing list bid adjustments. We’ll cover
remarketing in an advanced course. To see all of your bid adjustments and metrics for a specific campaign, you
can click on that campaign name in the list.

You can see how powerful Google Ads can be for you business when paired with Google Analytics. It allows
you to really understand the value of your marketing and make adjustments to improve your return on
investment.

Google Analytics for Beginners Wrap-Up

Course Review
Let’s go over what you’ve learned in Google Analytics for Beginners. We discussed:

 how digital analytics can help your business

 showed you how Google Analytics works
 and walked you through how to create an account, install the tracking code, and set up different views
with filters for testing.

You should also feel comfortable with how to navigate around Analytics, how to read through overviews and
full reports, and how to set up dashboards and shortcuts to quickly find the data you need.

We hope that you also understand how to perform basic analysis in the Audience, Acquisition, and Behavior
reports. Finally, we introduced you to campaign tracking and how to set up goals to measure conversions.

We also showed you how to link your Analytics and Google Ads accounts to track and optimize Google Ads
campaigns.

Next Steps

But before we go, let’s look at a few additional ways to improve your business using Google Analytics data.

If you want to see the top performing pages for new users, under Behavior go to “Site Content” and click on
the “All Pages” report. Then add a secondary dimension of “User Type,” so you can see which of your top
pages are being visited by new users. This can help inform your site content and marketing campaign strategy
to acquire even more users.

If you want to identify ineffective landing pages, go to the “Behavior” reports under “Site Content” and open
the “Landing Pages” report. Sort by “Bounce Rate” to see which pages are responsible for people leaving
without engaging with your site. If you’re running campaigns and want to correlate these landing pages with
your marketing efforts, add a secondary dimension of “campaign” or “source medium.” Then you can examine
which campaigns and landing pages are turning away users and make corrections.

Also, it’s important to understand how users on different devices respond to your digital marketing campaigns.
To view user campaign data across devices, go into the Acquisition reports and choose “Campaigns” and then
“All Campaigns.” Then add a secondary dimension of “Device Category” to the report. Now it’s easy to see
what happens to users on different devices, as they respond to your digital marketing campaigns.

There’s also the potential to optimize your digital campaigns using geographical data and Goals. Navigate to
the Location report in the Geo section of Google Analytics. Then under the Conversions pull-down menu to
the right, select a goal that you’re interested in and sort by “Goal Conversion Rate.” This will help you see
which cities or countries had the highest conversions and help you target those locations accordingly.

You should now know how to use Google Analytics to better understand your audience, improve the efficiency
of your digital marketing, and increase website conversions. Don’t forget to set up your Analytics account with
multiple views for testing and add filters to create reliable, accurate data. Also, set up goals to track your
website conversions and make sure you’ve tagged your marketing campaigns correctly for tracking.

Thank you for participating in Google Analytics for Beginners and don’t forget to take the final assessment to
receive your certificate. And please take our brief post-course survey! We obviously love data, and use your
feedback to improve our future Analytics Academy courses.

Happy analyzing!