By bbr

Data can be beautiful!

Analytical tools to help you measure marketing success and visualize data are hot stuff these days. Not only does clear visual reporting offer you valuable insight into the data, but it can be beautiful too! Google has long been one of the biggest providers of these rapidly evolving tools, and recent updates are further increasing the options available to you as well as their performance.

If your firm isn’t already firmly on the Google Analytics bandwagon, now is the time. There are many other useful data monitoring and analytics products, of course, and they’re each a fine choice as well. But since Google’s are by far the most common and have just been expanded and refined, they’re what we’ll focus on here.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio was introduced earlier in 2016 and since then, it’s grown into a truly impressive and highly useful tool for visualizing and combining data. Still in beta form, it offers comprehensive capacity to create reports of almost any kind using graphs and charts that are customizable almost without limit. You can portray the data any way you like using fonts and colors you choose, and add branding imagery to further personalize your reports.

One of Data Studio’s strengths is the capability to import data from any source. You can easily integrate data from Google Analytics, AdWords and other sources into a single report, or bring together data from multiple Analytics accounts. The product is based on Google Sheets, which means you can take data from LinkedIn, Facebook or anywhere else and once it’s converted to a Google Sheet you can include it in Data Studio reports. It also means you can share your reports easily, and choose to let others edit as well as view if you desire.

A limited version of Google Data Studio is available to users of the free Google Analytics program. You’ll get access to the full product only by purchasing the entire Google Analytics 360 Suite. Log in to Google Data Studio as you would to your existing Analytics and give it a try. For those who are more visually oriented and don’t particularly like trying to make sense of a spreadsheet, this tool can make a world of difference.

Google Analytics Demo Account

If you’re interested but haven’t yet gotten comfortable using Google Analytics, here’s a bit of news that may reassure you: there’s now an option to practice, learn and play around with everything this tool offers using a demo account. Introduced in August, this useful resource comes pre-populated with sample business data so you can learn how to set and measure goals, figure out how to create AdWords links, edit and review reports, see attribution models and lots more. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with all the stuff you can do on Google Analytics without fearing that you’re making a mess of real data your firm may need. You can check out a demo account with or without a Google Analytics account – if you don’t have one, Google will create one for you that’s just attached to your regular Google account (like for email or YouTube). Start by reading a few FAQs if you like, then get complete instructions for creating a demo account and learn how to use it in this article.

There’s no reason your firm can’t have the artistic marketing data analysis reports you’ve secretly ogled. Grab ahold of these two free resources and you’ll be ready to go in no time.