Using Google Analytics to Plan Your Advertising Placement

Planning an above the line advertising campaign for your small business? Before you decide where you’re going to advertise, geographically speaking, take a look at your Website analytics first.

With Google Analytics installed on your website you can run a Town/City visitor report (Visitors > Map Overlay) and discover where your visitors are located, finding the highest traffic cities.

If your business operates nationally or internationally, a high level report will provide some interesting data around visitor locations.

Google Analytics’ (GA) map overlay provides a “geo-traffic at a glance” style report, which is great for a high level, capital city indication of traffic location.

What’s even more valuable is the town/city report Analytics provides along with the map overlay:

If you’ve listened to the SBBM Podcast, then you’ll know we’re all about bang for marketing buck and minimising waste. What’s great about this report is that it highlights some of the smaller towns and cities where above the line advertising could be more affordable (and profitable) with better return on investment.

Now if you have an e-commerce website with Google Analytics E-commerce tracking installed or even goal tracking setup with a quote request form, you can take this report to the next level by checking out the e-commerce conversion rate stats on a town/city level.

Looking down the E-commerce Conversion Rate column will highlight the highest converting cities. The table above shows Adelaide and Perth have a reasonably high conversion rate compared to other cities. That is, a visitor from Adelaide or Perth are more likely to purchase than, say, a visitor from Melbourne. (Although Hobart has a higher conversion, the figures aren’t statistically significant.)

So, this report is suggesting that advertising campaign in Adelaide or Perth could provide a better return that one in Melbourne – particularly once you take into account advertising fees.

Of course there are other aspects to take into consideration before you rush and and books that quarter page ad in the Adelaide Messenger, but this is one important due diligence task you can perform before spending those hard earned on an advertising campaign.