Despite the obvious benefits marketing brings to businesses across the globe, 58.7% of marketing leaders are under pressure from their seniors to prove the value of marketing. While this figure is generalised across industries, it is most likely higher for education marketers due to higher pressure and longer life cycles. It’s increasingly important for universities to streamline their marketing and reporting to prove to the sceptics the incredible value marketing provides. This is where analytics comes in.

Utilising analytics can help you:

• Demonstrate return on investment (ROI).
• Develop a results-driven approach to your marketing.
• Provide audience insight.
• Build a marketing plan on a day-to-day basis.

Universal Analytics (the original Google analytics) is slowly being phased out. Google Analytics 4, or GA4, was launched in 2020 and provides users with more actionable reporting, a more detailed understanding of user-based actions and events, and better cross-channel tracking.

If you hadn’t already heard, we are moving towards a cookie-less world. The good thing is, GA4 doesn’t rely on third-party cookies. Instead, it uses specialist AI to fill in data gaps. By utilising GA4, you will be better aligned with the new General Data Protection Regulations without having to sacrifice any insights. Making sure you and your team have the right system in place is essential, but so is ensuring a future-proofed approach to your analytics.

5 Tips to Create a Foundation for Success

1. Ensure you are utilising tag manager and that all your tags are correctly configured.
2. Have both GA4 and Universal Analytics property running alongside each other.
3. Only create goals and events that have true value. Focus your attention on the most valuable touchpoints and engagements.
4. Set up funnels – use analytics to improve ad performance and website performance.
5. UTMS – set naming conventions across your organisation to standardise data that’s coming through.

Once your analytics systems are in place, your audits have been carried out, and you’re confident with the data coming in, it’s time to think about levelling up your team’s understanding of analytics. When training your teams, it’s essential to bear in mind these key considerations:

• Consider how bottlenecking requests for analytics could affect your teams. This is a problem most large organisations face; lots of stakeholders and teams wish to use analytics data, but a limited number of people within these groups can understand and translate the information.
• A broader base of knowledge across the board can help teams act independently and make better, more informed decisions.
• Keep up to date with the ever-changing analytics landscape and changing privacy regulations. Because of this, analytics coaching will be an ongoing part of your training programmes.

Our Top 6 Tips to Level up Your Team with Analytics

• Tip 1- Stakeholders – Manage your stakeholders to create clear guidance and communication routes. We recommend identifying a control, influence, and aware group for maximum impact.

• Tip 2- Housekeeping – Ensure your analytics properties have multiple admins so that you can easily make changes, add people to the account, and link platforms (even when your main analytics expert is unavailable.)

• Tip 3- Testing – Set up testing profiles in UA and GA4. The best way for your teams to learn is to get stuck into the platforms and start exploring. Start to set up goals, events, and custom reports. Learn how to filter the data to gain the insights you want immediately instead of wading through multiple menus and options.

• Tip 4 – Future Proofing – In an ideal world, in-house expertise and knowledge should be shared between all marketing teams on an ongoing basis. This promotes department independence regarding campaigns and reporting, ensuring everyone who needs to can provide answers and insights.

• Tip 5 – Flexibility – Understand each teams’ different requirements. Standardised reporting is great at a central level, but individual elements may need personalisation to gain the full benefit. Individuals would utilise these programmes more if they were configured to suit them. Each department can easily have its own views in UA or reporting collections in GA4.

• Tip 6 – Explore – The best way to learn the full potential of analytics is to explore. Use your testing environments. Share knowledge, successes, and failures. With increased privacy laws coming into play and Google’s consent mode going live in 2023, gaining a broader understanding of overall website performance will be crucial to succeed in a cookie-less world.

Interested in what Unicom could do for your university? Get in touch today for a free, no-strings-attached chat.