UK Marketing Day was a day long virtual conference on 2nd June, with a series of webinars taking place on topics ranging from SEO to Email Marketing. 

The highlight of the day for me was Andy Crestodina's Analytics for Content Marketers: Insights and Actions from 7 Reports. If you like your webinars fast-paced with loads of practical tips, then you'll love it.

Crestodina argues that every marketer should be taking control of Google Analytics, and not just fobbing them off to someone else. It should be used to test out marketing ideas thus:

Have a marketing idea -> ask a question that supports the idea -> find the report that provides the answer -> Either proceed with the idea or reject it-> if you've proceeded, measure the impact!

It's not enough to have these vats of data, you have to analyse them, and following the above framework will help you get to that point.

One example he gives is to do with visitors to your website using a mobile device. 

Question: 

Are mobile visitors less engaged than desktop users?

Find the report: 

Go to Audience > Mobile > Overview in Google Analytics

Switch the view to compare page views with bounce rates (aka the number of people who leave after reading one page).

In his example, bounce rates  are higher with mobile, so the conclusion is that mobile visitors are less enagaged.

Proceed: 

More analytics research can show you which pages are putting mobile visitors off, or this conclusion might prompt you to redesign your website to be more mobile-friendly.

Crestodina is keen to stress that the data is going to be inaccurate. The main thing is that it's accurate enough to help you come to a conclusion.

Click through the link below to watch any of the webinars from that day!