Taking Google Analytics With a Pinch of Salt

I just came back from the iCEEfest (Interactive Central & Eastern Europe Festival), where I had the pleasure to meet several giants of the internet. During a presentation on YouTube Advertising, one of the lovely ladies from Google asked the audience if the data provided by AdWords and Google Anlaytics are different (regarding the data which theoretically should be the same), which data set should we trust? Even if I was saying "AdWords" as loud as my comfort zone permitted, she made the following comparison: "Should you trust Google Analytics, which is a free product or AdWords for which you pay and for which we work very hard to make it as accurate as possible?". This got me thinking about the discrepancies I've noticed along the way, not only between the data offered by AdWords and Analytics, but within the Analytics data set as well.

The following two glitches stuck to mind (until now) and I wanted to share them with you, in case you have encountered the same problems, you need to know that you are not alone :)

1. Traffic coming through non-branded keywords. No one can argue with the fact that this metric is plays an important role in measuring result based SEO efforts (even though (not provided) gives us headaches almost each day). What I've noticed is the following: if you apply a filter to filter out a particular keyword form organic traffic, and than you filter only the organic visits that came through the same keyword, the sum is actually not equal to total organic traffic. Lets see an example. I took a dating site, which has not many organic visits, and excluded the keyword "date" from the organic visits:

 

After, I applied a filter to see only the visits coming through the keyword "date":

The excluding filter gave the result 662,925 visits, the including filter gave as a result 831 visits, which totals 663,756 visits, while without any filters the organic traffic is of:

You realize that the issue here is not about those 22 visits, but the higher organic traffic one site has the higher the difference. And I know that Google does not recommend using more than one filter, which in this case is not the case. If anybody can tell what I am missing please do.

2. Paid search traffic. We all know how important it is to attribute conversions to traffic channels, especially when we are investing money in paid search campaigns. This Google Analytics glitch confused me even more than the previous one. As you know you can see your PPC campaigns in 3 places in Google Analytics, that is if you connect your GA account with your Google AdWords account, under:
1. Traffic Sources -> Sources-> Search-> Paid;

2. Traffic Sources -> Sources -> Campaigns;

3. Traffic Sources - Advertising -> AdWords -> Campaigns.

It is important to note that in the following example, the business only had AdWords campaigns running and that all links pointing to the site were compiled with the help of Google's URL builder. As you can see under the Paid Search Campaigns all visits are show, although the campaign parameter came through only for a very small amount of traffic. Due to this fact only a small amount of traffic is shown under Campaigns. Where AdWords Campaigns are concerned, the 17 visits for which the campaign parameter did not come though are not shown, although the tracking platform does recognize that the source of those 17 visits is Google. So when applying filters and attributing conversions, you have to be careful and check that the whole amount of traffic is take into consideration.

What other Google Analytics glitches have you encountered? Would love to hear your stories in the comment section below :)

6 essential skills for newbies in marketing

 There are a number of  skills that a newbie must possess to get a job in any domain, not just marketing. And the following soft and hard skills are important if you want to storm your way into this particular field. Do not worry, the majority can be easily learnt and assimilated, but others make up the passion for marketing and are part of who you are as a person. I'll start with the former. So let's jump right into it, shall we?

1. Analytics or statistics, as you might want to call it, both words hide more or less the same concept. And they are important because in my opinion marketing is a combination of science and (let's call it) feeling. And analytics is the science part of it.

2. SEO is a significant part of the XXIst century's marketing and I foresee a major increase in the role it will play in marketing, as search engines have become the most important source of information in today's society. Of course, we have to consider the fact that access to internet does not cover the whole globe just yet, and decades will pass until it does. But the majority of the target market of many-many businesses, first action in the decision process is to search.

3. Photoshop. Oh yes! The time when Photoshop skills weren't needed passed approximately when the Adobe started developing it. The only person who doesn't have to know how to create breathtaking images is the CMO, but you can't actually get there if you do not know Photoshop. Although it's probably something you learn so you can forget it latter, for newbies it is a necessity.

4. Creativity. Although you probably need to creative in any position, you have to be ultimately creative in the marketing field, because you are in charge of making your brand memorable, and only the shocking "advertisements" (and here I do not use it solely in the traditional sense) are unforgettable. In one hand your interviewer cannot measure you creativity, so let's say you can get a marketing job without being creative, but creativity will keep you from being dismissed latter on.

5. Smiling. Although this is an action, for me being able to smile with all your heart and soul to a customer or potential customer is a sign of having great people skills. But, do be careful, Pan-Am smiles won't get you nowhere, I am talking about crow's feet causing smiles.

6. Listening, understanding and acting. Although it is the sixth skill on my list, listening is the essence of marketing. If you cannot listen to what people say, to what you customers are saying, to what your competitors' clients are saying, to what those employees are saying who get in touch with the customers on a daily basis, and understand theirs feelings, motivations, dissatisfaction and so on, and act based on these, you will probably get fired (best case scenario) or bankrupt the company (worst case scenario). I do believe listening is a very hard thing to do for some of us, because the human nature is built in such a way in which it's primary concern is him/herself. So it is difficult to switch off our primary instinct, but with a little self-discipline nothing is impossible.

7. Social Media. I left SM for last because I consider it to be a combination of hard and soft skills. There are some aspects of social media that are basically science, you can easily learn it, but some aspects are related to your sociable side. In contrast with our "listening problems", humans are sociable by nature (yes, everything comes down to our monkey instincts as I like to call them). But the real challenge is to be popular on the world wide web, which is a totally different thing compared to real life, so not everyone got a hold of it, but we all will. Eventually.

Now all we have to do is to identify our weak spot and start building it up. For example my weakest spot is ... you guessed it: Photoshop :) If you're like me start reading this Photoshop manual (it is indeed for an old version, but the basics are the same and the information is fairly organized).

If your weakness lies in the first 2 points I highly recommend Hubspot's Inbound Marketing University. But if the 6th point is giving you trouble check out Carnegie's Secrets of Success for tips :)

If you would add some other skills as well, and you probably would, please do.

All newbies in marketing, I salute you! :D