Blog Archive

Conversion attribution has always been a thorn search marketers’ sides, especially if they were using Google Analytics. Now Google has given us a tool to help us better attribute conversions and be able to better see which channels really have an effect on performance. The Multi-Channel Funnels tools has been a limited access beta for a few months now, and we at Nina Hale have had the pleasure of testing it out with several clients. Today, however, this tool is available to all.

Multi-Channel Funnels helps take the guess work out of ROI-focused marketing efforts. It allows us to dig deep, and really understand the full impact, both direct and indirect, of our various marketing efforts. If you have played around with the search funnel reports in Google Analytics, this will be very familiar for you, as Multi-Channel Funnels is an extension of the search funnel reports, which now incorporate all online channels. You can see assisted conversions as well as detailed multi-channel path data.

For example, wouldn’t it be nice to know if your paid search campaigns are having an indirect impact on direct and organic traffic and leads? Well, with Multi-Channel Funnels you can do just that:

Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels Shows Indirect Impact of Paid Search Advertising

Or, what if you want to see the number of assisted conversions that each channel provided? Multi-Channel Funnels allows you to see that too:

Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels Shows Assisted Converasions for All Online Channels

These are just a few of the high level reports that you can pull from Multi-Channel Funnels. However, you can dig as deep as you want. For example, you can look for how your non-branded organic terms assist your branded organic terms. Or, you can look for how each paid search channel affects the others. All in all, this new tool in Google Analytics, allows you to view a more accurate ROI picture for all your marketing efforts, to better allocate funds to the best performers/performance drivers, and to find opportunities to further exploit.

by +Mike Grinberg

Google Analytics has yet another new feature in the next version and it is called Multi-Channel Funnels. As they explain:

“Multi-Channel Funnels reports will help marketers see a fuller picture of the “interactions” that led to a goal or transaction tracked in Google Analytics. Previously, by default, Google Analytics gave credit to the final interaction preceding a goal or transaction. However, the typical customer does research, touching multiple points in the purchase funnel before converting.”

The new funnel reports go back across all visit attributions for the previous 30 days and compile the record of steps leading up to conversion. From Google:

“For instance, customers may become aware of a product through a social networking site and ultimately convert via an email newsletter or visiting the website directly via their browser. Or, a customer may become aware of a product from a banner ad, then search on Google for the brand name of the product. In this case, the brand name search on Google gets full credit for the conversion since it was the last interaction. However, the investment and effort the marketer made on the banner ad can go unnoticed.”

The Assisted Conversions report is particularly interesting. Kind of like a slam dunk getting an assist from a nicely timed backboard pass, a sale from a direct visit could get an “assist” from re-marketing served after the initial interaction.

Also interesting is the Top Conversion Paths report which gives a visual representation of goal attribution.

+Peter Quale

Recently Google AdWords released another feature to give you insight into your account’s performance. Its goal: to show you how some of your performance metrics compare to other advertisers Google has determined offer the same goods or services as you.

Per Google:

‘Analyze competition’ examines your account’s activity over the past two weeks and lists categories that represent the products or services you’re advertising. Categories are based on actual Google.com search terms and are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with your account, you’ll see a bar graph, which shows your individual performance compared to the average performance of other advertisers in the same category.

What it means to you? We think it has great future potential, if it includes more insight into what might help you move up the chain. Useful questions it could help you answer in the future:

• Have you forgotten major keywords?
• Are you not bidding enough?
• What about the Quality Scores of the competition?
• Is the competition getting more or less business than you as a result of their PPC advertising?

CTR is a pet metric of ours, but beating your competitors’ CTR doesn’t necessarily have much impact on your bottom line. We say it’s business as usual, though high marks in the Analyze Competition feature may give you some nice bragging rights. For now, it’s a nice way to do a reality check on your impressions, clicks, CTR and Avg. Position (the four metrics available in the report).