Google Analytics skills a top digital marketer should have

With most of the world’s population actively using the internet, it has become inconceivable to survive without it. The internet is the primary global channel for sharing and receiving news and information on every topic.

Our internet-driven world has witnessed a remarkable transformation in operations around the web, including how brands and companies market their products and services with websites and social media.

In this article, we’ll discuss the Google Analytics skills digital marketers should have and some of the skills you should list in your Google Analytics job descriptions.

We’ll then explore other desirable digital marketing skills and recommend the best Google Analytics skills test to hire the best professional for your organization.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing involves using digital tools to interact with customers and promote services and products. Successful digital marketing strategies will identify the best online platforms to engage target customers.

Digital marketing is widespread across several popular online platforms. It cuts across many areas, including email marketing, blogging, social media marketing, and SEO content.

Using these online tools and techniques can help build an effective marketing strategy for your brand. Whether your business marketing goal is to increase conversions or customer retention rate, digital marketing is instrumental to the process. And to develop successful marketing campaigns, it’s essential to analyze your customers’ engagement.

The 3 top Google Analytics skills for digital marketers

Google Analytics (GA) is the most popular open-source marketing tool for analyzing online traffic.

It provides reliable data insights that brands can use to identify platforms effective for their target audience, prepare a functional marketing strategy, and assess their digital marketing performance.

Below are three GA skills to improve your digital marketing team:

1. Expertise in advanced traffic segments

Segments are tools that provide insights into traffic that matter for your site and the strategy that brought the traffic. It allows users to determine the referrals, sources, and content that led to conversions, allowing them to intensify the strategy for higher conversions.

Expert digital marketers should know how to use Google Analytics to identify the number of visitors to a site, the best keywords that result in conversions, and the geographical areas your engagement is from. 

They should also calculate key metrics, like bounce rate (the number of visitors that visited a page and left) and the conversion rate (the number of visitors that performed the desired action, such as making a purchase).

2. Expert ROI measurement

Until recently, marketers had little data to accurately determine what marketing strategy worked or didn’t work. Now, Google Analytics has proven to be a credible tool for digital marketers to review how well they spend their marketing budget.

While anybody can count clicks and shares, a top digital marketer should be able to measure metrics and ROIs relevant to the business. They should know how to allocate funds to the marketing strategy that will yield the best investment returns.

They should also be able to set up goals tracking on a GA account and filter out visitors that didn’t contribute to meeting a specific business goal. With this, they can get further conversion insights on the dashboard to measure which marketing strategy provides the best returns.

3. Keywording and SEO 

A good digital marketer should know how to use GA’s keyword tool to attract readers and potential customers to the desired content. And they should understand SEO best practices to keep content at the top of popular search pages.

Top digital marketers can link the best-performing keywords to the goal conversion data and adapt their content to boost conversion rates. While the technical team handles the complexities, digital marketers optimize all content to build an effective marketing campaign.

Other skills required for successful digital marketing

Besides Google Analytics, other tools and skills ensure digital marketing success. Here are some of the most important:

1. Content creation

The core of digital marketing is to generate content that can attract potential customers. Creating high-quality and SEO-optimized content is great, but that content must be appealing enough to convince readers to engage with the brand.

Digital marketers must have a strong content strategy that will engage target readers now and in the years to come. Besides matching the content tone to the brand’s identity, they should also understand the difference between informational and promotional content.

Recommended reading: How to find and hire the best content specialists for your company

2. Search engine marketing (SEM)

Google’s algorithm changes frequently, and the need for keyword optimization for Google SERPs rankings has also increased. Besides organic SEO practices, digital marketers use search engine marketing (SEM) to reinforce the marketing campaign further.

SEM refers to paid marketing campaigns that enable businesses to secure top pages for their sites. Using Google’s SEM practice as an example, brands participate in an auction in which the highest bidders win the top pages. 

A common SEM payment method is pay-per-click advertisement, where brands pay Google according to the number of visitors that click on their site. Combining organic SEO with SEM can skyrocket your content to the top of search pages and improve your brand awareness.

3. Customer relationship management (CRM)

CRM is a skill that enables businesses to monitor, understand, and improve customer experience. It provides empathetic and interpersonal strategies to analyze customer needs and connect with them to boost loyalty and retention.

4. Communication skills

A digital marketer requires excellent communication skills to publicize relevant information effectively, establish trust, and build long-lasting relationships with new and existing customers. Good communication conveys messages to customers in a clear, entertaining, and useful way.

Every digital marketer should be able to assess things from a customer perspective so that businesses can communicate appealing content to their audience. Besides content creation, communication skills are critical for direct marketing and customer service.

5. Social media tools

Since social media platforms now comprise the main hub for public interactions, digital marketers must harness their features to reach target audiences. Besides content posting, digital marketers must consider the content’s quality, relevance, and audience engagement.

Different social media platforms have distinct algorithms that help brands target their content to their desired audience. Most platforms have paid advertisements, hashtags, and business groups to help brands establish a social media presence.

6. Basic design skills 

A recent study on marketers showed that 70% of their content contained visuals. Pictures and videos produce higher conversion rates, rankings, and engagements than written copies. As such, marketers must adapt and learn to use basic visual software.

Visual software like Illustrator, Canva, and Inkscape are reliable tools professional digital marketers use to create compelling visual content. Basic knowledge of a variety of visual skills, or expertise in a few programs like Adobe Photoshop, is a significant advantage. 

Why Google Analytics is essential to digital marketing success

Google Analytics (GA) is critical to digital marketing because of the extensive resources and data that every brand needs to assess its marketing efforts. 

Below are some of the reasons for putting Google Analytics at the center of your digital marketing strategy:

1. It provides insights

GA provides valuable insights to gauge the effects of digital marketing strategies. It offers information about who visits a site, how they find your site, the pages visited, how long they spend on a page, and the links they click.

These insights also help you discover the most functional marketing channels to achieve your business goals. With this knowledge, you can make accurate choices and allocate a marketing budget accordingly.

2. It shows areas to improve

Google Analytics also helps you understand any areas that need improvement. Digital marketers use Google Analytics’ quality data to identify content that is not keeping your visitors engaged. A good example is the bounce rate metric, which shows users leaving your site.

3. It helps users with demographic data

GA enables users to analyze the breakdown of engagement by gender, age groups, and geographical locations to help you plan your marketing strategy better. For instance, you can decide to promote content in a location where you get many visitors.

Why pre-employment tests are the new resumes

Google Analytics provides many benefits, but it can only help your brand if a professional digital marketer uses it appropriately. And the best way to accurately ascertain Google Analytics expertise is with a pre-employment assessment.

Resumes shouldn’t be a hiring manager’s first introduction to digital marketing candidates as they leave room for unconscious bias and merely reflect a candidate’s claimed experience. Some candidates may even brand themselves as something they’re not through positive references and over-rated skill sets.

On the other hand, pre-screening tests judge candidates based on the skills they can demonstrate. Take advantage of this opportunity and register with TestGorilla to access the Google Analytics test and many others that will enhance your hiring.