8 Predictions for Google Analytics in 2013 and Beyond (Part 2)

Last week we discussed 4 predictions for how Google Analytics will change the way we measure our lead generation campaigns in 2013 and beyond. Even if you are not involved with lead generation, don't be afraid, because many of these concepts can be applied in many more places than just Lead Generation. In fact, they are applicable to just about any type of marketing activity!

View Part 1: Google Analytics for Lead Generation in 2013

These next predictions follow a similar utility: They can be used to improve the way you measure lead generation campaigns as well as just about any other marketing activity you may be doing currently.

Here are 4 more ways that we will able to measure marketing activities differently using Google Analytics in 2013 and beyond.

5) Remarketing and the Top of the Funnel

A great website converts at 5%. That means that even for a great website, 95% of all traffic is not taking a favorable action when they visit. We can track those visitors who do not convert across the Internet using remarketing tags to identify users who fit that description. But you already know that, because remarketing is becoming evermore popular, and GA provides great tools for remarketing.

While gaining wildly in popularity for advertisers, remarketing for lead generation also suffers from attribution and ROI analysis problems that make many lead seeking advertisers skeptical of its utility.  Both of these problems can be solved using new features in Google Analytics.

Attribution modeling is now available to all Google Analytics users (previously this was only for premium users), and this allows us to assign at least some value to visits higher in the purchase funnel. This is great for e-commerce sites when there is often hundreds of dollars in attribution value to divide amongst your visits, but this does not work nearly as well for lead generation websites that must divide the value of a single lead amongst channels. Assuming that you follow the steps to import your offline sales data into GA as listed in last week's post, you won't have any problem calculating the return on investment from your remarketing efforts.

By combining remarketing + attribution modeling and sprinkling in your actual sales data, you can now prove the value of remarketing at all phases in the lead generation process. It may be bearing more fruit than you give it credit for.

Add Google Tag Manager into the mix and it is safe to say that

There will be more Remarketing in 2013, period

*Note: conversion rates vary by industry/traffic source/value proposition/offer, etc. this is just a number I'm using to prove a point.

6) Multi Channel Funnels Become Much More Meaningful

While I love multi channel funnels in Google Analytics, I find the reports to be the most meaningful when dollars are involved as opposed to viewing simply by goals achieved. By importing revenue data from leads in your CRM system, adding revenue from leads to multi channel funnels becomes possible. While I don't expect this to be available immediately (might not even be until 2014), this is a huge step in the right direction.

Much like with attribution modeling, showcasing which traffic sources banded together to create a single lead can be quite overwhelming from an analysis standpoint. While we can see estimated goal values in the report, this information is not ideal for making firm business decisions. We need more data to gain confidence in these reports, and can do this with dimension widening.

Along with adding sales data into GA, we can also add several more dimensions to use in our analysis like gender and age. At some point we should be able to view this information in multi channel funnels, for use as a secondary dimension on a report or elsewhere. This presents the opportunity to add demographic elements to our reports that was previously unachievable.

Imagine the ability to segment your Facebook referral traffic by age group and determine what age groups are the most valuable customers? Would you use this information to better target users of that platform in the future? Of course you would! In the right hands, this information can become invaluable to marketers on any advertising platform that allows you to target based on demographic information.

7) Prove Value for High Value/Low Volume B2B Leads

Here is a summary of most conversations I have had with B2B lead generators in niche industries:

“Our sales process can take 12-18 months to close a deal, but each time we close a deal it is worth six figures. Should we be generating leads using PPC?”

Yes, you should ABSOLUTELY be generating leads through PPC! If all it takes is a single sale to pay for the entirety of your program, then let's go get two sales!  The problem is that with a long sales cycle, the program could be abandoned before those 12-18 months are complete. How do we make these programs more accountable?

Here is where I would start:

• Make sure your sales team keeps your contact data accurate for each sales opportunity (A – B – C – D opportunities)
• Use estimated sales revenue based on the stage of the sales opportunity (i.e. 75% of estimated value for A opportunities, 50% for B opportunities, 25% for C opportunities, 0% for D opportunities) and store this in a calculated field in your CRM system
• Import the estimated sales revenue into Google Analytics as a custom dimension
• Report on estimated revenue based on where these leads are in the sales process

8) Mobile Becomes Accountable

These are just a few of many predictions we can make