Do you know what your biggest traffic sources are? Is it Facebook? Emails? Pinterest? Maybe Twitter?
Depending on where your audience is, some platforms will drive a lot of traffic to your site… while others may not deliver any results. That’s why knowing where most of your site traffic is coming from is extremely important.
Google Analytics Acquisition Report is exactly built for that goal – to help you track where your site traffic is coming from. It helps you make crucial decisions like where you should devote your efforts and marketing dollars – so you don’t end up spending your resources on platforms that don’t drive traffic and business to your website.
In this blog post, we’ll be diving deep into the Google Analytics Acquisition Report – source/medium report, a vital subsection organized by source with acquisition, behavior and conversions data in one table. If you need to learn the basics of Google Analytics before we jump into this particular section, be sure to check out our post on Google Analytics Basics.
Now let’s take a quick look on the Acquisition Report’s most helpful section, especially for those who are new to Google Analytics.
1. Source Medium Report
You can access this section on the left sidebar of your dashboard which looks like the picture below.
You can ditch the overview section and jump right in to the all traffic > source medium report. If you’re wondering why, it’s because almost everything you need is already in this report.
You’ll see a complete ranking of all your top traffic sources. Plus, you get to analyze what’s going on with your traffic, seeing behaviors and conversions as well. You’ll be able to see the individual number of page sessions, bounce rates, pages/session and session duration.
And before you roll your eyes, the things you see in this report are not just “vanity metrics”. They’re actually quite useful.
Take bounce rate for instance. If you can spot a traffic source that has an unusually high bounce rate, relative to the others in the list, you may infer that the visitors from that traffic source are not part of your target market.
You also can track the conversions and revenue generated by each traffic source. This one’s a no-brainer. Obviously, when you see a traffic source generating the most revenue compared to others, you’d want to funnel your marketing efforts towards that platform. While also spending less time and money on those sources that are not driving any business.
2. Campaigns Report
This report shows you data on the marketing campaigns you’re running. You would need however to install UTM Parameters if you want to make use of this report.
For illustration’s sake, let’s say you’re running a content marketing campaign on Facebook. You’re trying to get Facebook users to click on any of the 4 different blog posts on your site. That means you’ll have 4 different Facebook posts promoting 1 blog post, each with a unique UTM code. Since they are all promoting the same thing, they will have the campaign in common.
When you log in to the campaigns report, you’ll see exactly which of the 4 blog posts attracted the most traffic to your site. Plus the standard metrics like bounce rates, sessions, pages/session and session duration.
3. Keywords Report
If you want to know what keywords your visitors are using to land on your site, this is the report you’d want to check out. Keywords are very helpful in boosting your site’s SEO. And, they also provide you additional insights on what content and offers your audience might be interested in.
Google Analytics Acquisition Report Key Takeaways
Marketing results, like most things in life, are quite unpredictable. Sometimes, a platform you least expect to generate results (like traffic or conversions) turns out to be the dark horse in your marketing campaign. It’s also possible to get an underwhelming ROI, or maybe none at all, even on platforms you’ve invested most of your resources.
You simply can’t foresee or guess what’s going to work in your marketing efforts. That’s why tracking how the different pieces of your marketing efforts is extremely important. And Google Analytics’ Acquisition Reports helps you with that.
By looking at the most helpful sections as outlined above, you can now easily navigate and find that data you need to make crucial decisions about your business. So the next time you need to decide what strategy to use or where to spend your marketing dollars… you’re now confident you can mine for data insights that’ll help you finesse marketing like a true pro.
Want to better understand the results of your marketing?
