After viewing countless videos with Google's Evangelist, Justin Cutroni, I feel a more captivating opening line would be, "Hi and welcome, my name is Justin Cutroni, and I'll be your instructor throughout this course. In my role as a Digital Analytics Evangelist at Google I try to help people understand how to leverage the Google Analytics platform to optimize their data collection, processing, configuration, and reporting to whoop the competition's ass." Then obviously proceed to show the awesome gif below featuring two cats on a treadmill and pose the question, "Would you rather your business be the light colored cat who has successfully mastered and integrated Google Analytics? Or the darker colored cat that has not integrated any form of digital analytics?"

An analogy like this would certainly catch my attention. Of course I'd want my business to be the light colored cat! The light colored cat looks like they've been training with Usain Bolt while the darker cat looks like, well, anyone that has ever competed against Usain Bolt. To remind you...

In all seriousness, the Google Analytics Platform Principles training highlights the many benefits of Google Analytics to a business' data collection, processing, configuration, and reporting techniques. These platform fundamentals allow for adequate interpretation of the data you're provided on the platform to make informed decisions to strengthen your competitive position. Through transforming and aggregating data, Google Analytics provides filters, goals, and grouping. Filters exclude, include or can change data, while goals track certain conversions to meet business objectives, and grouping aggregates data together to analyze channels and content related groups. These methods, along with report sampling, reduce latency while maintaining high accuracy for timely answers to business operations. By saving time and money, businesses are more effective and better suited to meet their strategic business objectives. However, according to Avinash Kaushik, Author of Digital Marketing Evangelist - Google, 90% of the failures in web analytics is because businesses do not have DUMB objectives. DUMB objectives are doable, understandable, manageable, and beneficial. Therefore, it is not just enough to integrate Google Analytics and think, OK great we're going to meet all of our strategic business objectives! Kaushik gives many good tactics to break down desirable outcomes so they may be dissected into actionable steps towards your business objectives. For example, if a company wants to improve marketing effectiveness, they must 1. identify broken things in m, 2. figure out how to do n, and 3. experiment with p type of campaigns. Once a company has deciphered the actionable steps to reach their desired outcome, they may leverage Google Analytics to provide data that will assist them in fulfilling their strategic business objectives. Now that, is what you call getting a leg up on the competition.

Leveraging Google Analytics to Crush the Competition