In this four-unit course, we’ll present some of the most popular ways to avoid using data when making business decisions. We’ll cover everything from mystical tools, like crystal balls and divining rods, to traditional data-avoidance techniques, like coin flipping. You’ll find that once you adopt these methods you’ll be able to make hundreds, and maybe thousands, of decisions a day!
Still wondering if this course is right for you? Check out our FAQ for more information.
We’re excited to help digital marketers become more data savvy through the Analytics Academy. Initially launched in October of last year, our first course attracted more than 145,000 students - and more than 30,000 finished the course and earned a certificate of completion.
That’s why today we’re excited to announce the launch of our next course in the Analytics Academy titled “Google Analytics Platform Principles.”
In this course we’ll dive deeper into the details of how the platform collects, transforms and organizes the data you see in Analytics. Understanding how these processes work is the first step to refining your implementation and uncovering more valuable insights about your business.
In this self-paced online course, you’ll learn about:
the four components of the Analytics platform: collection, processing, configuration and reporting
how Analytics collects the data you need across different devices
how your data is transformed before you see it in your reports
key concepts for customizing your Analytics data in useful ways
Registration is now open and the course begins March 11, 2014. You can sign up here.
The importance of education
It’s never been a more exciting time for businesses as technology is driving innovation at an astounding rate. With the introduction of mobile devices (and tablets) and the ability to understand user behavior - the fundamental way that we do business is changing. And the key driver is data.
All of these new technologies create information - data that we can use to better understand the needs of customers. If we understand the customer better, we can help them achieve their goals, while we achieve ours.
Nowhere is this more evident than in digital marketing and digital advertising. 78% of marketers feel the need to become more data driven and almost 40% of major brands see a talent gap in analytics. Marketers need to know how their campaigns drive direct conversions, and more importantly, how they improve the overall performance of other campaigns. This can be an imposing task for someone that doesn’t know the difference between a conversion and bounce rate.
No matter what your role in business, from marketing to product to PR, you will need to work with data. Luckily there many opportunities for all of us to learn. Make 2014 the year that you invest in yourself and develop your analytical skills.
To paint the picture of the opportunity, we also created an infographic to get you excited about embarking on your own personal analytics education (see a preview below, but view the whole graphic here). We hope to see you at our MOOC in class!
My son is a LEGO enthusiast, and even though I don’t build that often, I am usually involved in the acquisition process of LEGO sets or digital goods. To quote a few, we build with bricks, plan with their software, play with their apps, buy through their website and consume content on their social profiles. Quite a lot of touch points with their brand, and that’s not all!
On my side, I get very curious on how they measure and optimize their customer experiences, so I like to use them as an example of how challenging the measurement world has become. And the way we look at this challenge at Google is through three lenses of measurement:
Holistic Measurement: how can we understand our customers using multiple devices through multiple touch points?
Full Credit Measurement: how can we attribute the credit of bringing new and returning customers to marketing campaigns?
Active Measurement: how can we make sure that data is accessible, accurate and comprehensive?
This is the kind of challenge that we try to solve for and that drives our thinking. Paul Muret, VP Engineering at Google, discussed these three challenges in his article on the Harvard Business Review and how we should face them. Here is an excerpt:
This is creating tremendous opportunities for business teams to engage customers throughout their new and more complex buying journeys. But before you can take advantage, you have to understand that journey by measuring and analyzing the data in new ways that value these moments appropriately. The payoff is better alignment between marketing messages and consumers’ intent during their paths to purchase - and ultimately, better business results.
Below is a presentation delivered by me at Dublin, in a Google Think event earlier this year. I discuss each of the challenges in depth.
