Why Your EDO Should Be Using Google Data Studio in 2020
May 20, 2020 | By: Brianna VetranoThe turn of 2020 got us thinking about how DCI can help economic development organizations become more efficient, more integrated and more balanced in the new decade. In 2019, it was all about Elevating Your Digital Marketing, growing standardized channels and testing out new strategies. While these themes will hold true in 2020 and beyond, it’s time to start amplifying the way we view our data.
If you’re an EDO that has taken the proper steps to generate brand awareness through channels like email newsletters, search engine marketing and social media advertising, then you’re well aware of how time-consuming reporting and analysis can be. This is where our favorite (and free) reporting dashboard, Google’s Data Studio, saves the day (and your budget).
Recently featured in Neil Patel’s Marketing Trends for 2020, an integrated reporting platform like Data Studio will boost your brand above the competition. Not only does an automated reporting dashboard save time on extracting performance data, but it could also help your team better understand where (and when) you should allocate your ad dollars to get the best return on your investment. Here are just a few benefits of Data Studio for your EDO’s reporting solutions:
Data Studio automates reporting by centralizing all of your data sources.
Sick of the tedious task of logging into multiple advertising interfaces or CRMs, and then manually inputting the data, just to lose it all when your systems suddenly go down? Well, fear not. Data Studio is a cloud-based, automated reporting dashboard that pulls in multiple data points in real time from a wide breadth of sources. These sources include Google Analytics, Doubleclick Campaign Manager, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager and many more. All you have to do is log in to your accounts within Data Studio, connect your data sources and start analyzing!
You can easily view lifetime performance. And then make marketing decisions based on the data.
Now that you have all of your advertising data in one unified place, you can look at engagement metrics from multiple platforms, and decide which channel is performing the best for you. Maybe you see that display banner ads are generating a ton of clicks, but the spend is high with few conversions generated. In the next column, you see that Facebook has a lower number of clicks but spend is low and conversion volume is high. You can now make the informed decision to shift ad dollars from display banner ads to the higher performing Facebook ads.
In the example below, we can see things like month-over-month trends in conversion data, engagement on the site and traffic by advertising source. Based on these trends, we can decide whether or not certain channels are working, how much to invest in mobile over desktop, or even what time of day we should show ads.
It’s free!
In a world filled with endless options, it’s easy to get swept up by the next bright and shiny trend. But when something is free (and seamlessly connects with Google products), it’s hard to say no. While some channel integrations, like LinkedIn Campaign Manager, require a paid connector to pull data into Google Data Studio, tools like Supermetrics are affordable and save hours of time on reporting – making it well worth the investment from our perspective. If you are looking for something even more advanced, paid analytics dashboards like DashThis and Amplitude are great for connecting in bulk on a greater scale. If you’re focused on some more basic reporting (and on a budget), then Google Data Studio is your sure-fire reporting system for success.
Interested in getting a Data Studio reporting dashboard built for your EDO, or want to know more about our digital marketing services and analytics? Reach out to DCI’s Vice President of Digital at [email protected].