This webinar demonstrates how, with just a few hours of work a week, online student recruitment professionals can use Google Analytics to drive continuous improvement in their campaigns, increasing lead generation, targeting prospective students more effectively, and seeing more accurate and measurable results.

1. Maximizing the Effectiveness of Your
Student Recruitment Campaigns
with Google Analytics
Presented by: Philippe Taza, CEO
Higher Education Marketing
ptaza@higher-education-marketing.com

2. • Creating an effective GA measurement plan
• GA basics: Setting up and optimizing accounts
• Getting real value from goals and conversion tracking
• Linking the Search Console and AdWords to GA
• Tracking campaigns
• Navigating and interpreting GA reports
• Measuring your results
• Optimizing for continuous improvement
Today’s Presentation

3. Implement a Google Analytics measurement plan

4. Agent Dashboard

5. Non Agent Dashboard

6. GA Basics: Getting Started
Select the Admin tab to access the Google Analytics control panel
The Google Analytics Admin Interface

7. GA Basics: Setting up an account
It’s really easy to get up and running with Google Analytics, just
insert the code into the pages you want to track.

8. Managing Google Analytics Accounts

9. Linking AdWords and the Search Console
• If you are marketing with Google AdWords, you must link the accounts for better tracking.
• The Search Console provides deep insights into your website and should be linked.

10. Remove internal traffic – setup an IP Filter
Neglecting to optimize your filter setting means that internal
traffic from your campus gets lumped in with your overall
results-

11. Remove internal traffic – Setup an IP Filter

12. Optimizing Your Setup
Google Analytics provides many levels of permissions for sharing access
Sharing access to GA accounts will allow key team members to
collaborate when reviewing your strategy-

13. Segment and Measure Your Web Traffic
• Under the system tab, you will find 22 segments to choose from. The
purple ones are some of my favorites.
• Custom segments can also be created for advanced users!

14. Setting up Website Goals
There are five goal types in Analytics-
• Destination Goals (pages users see
when they complete an action e.g.
Thank you pages)
• Event Goals (e.g. viewed a video,
downloaded a pdf prospectus etc.)
• Duration Goals (time spent on site)
• Pages viewed per session

15. Setting up a Request Info Goal
The request info goal is very common on EDU websites. To configure such a goal in
Google Analytics, you will need 2 URLs:
1. The URL of the Form
2. The URL of the Thank You page users see once they fill out the form

16. Setting up Website Goals

17. The Google Analytics Reporting Interface
Other cool features are available: exporting, email scheduling, etc.
The GA Reporting interface contains various command options and pathways
to specific reports-

18. The Google Analytics Reporting Interface
The four main GA reports sections are-
• Audience- Provide insight into user characteristics(e.g. demographic info,
location,etc.)
• Acquisition- Help you understandhow users find your site and compare
different marketingchannels
• Behavior – Provide useful informationabout how users interact with your
site
• Conversions- Monitor your conversionpage performance,as well the
success of your ongoing goals

19. The Overview Report
The Overview report under Audience, is the report you land on once you begin your
Google Analytics journey.

20. The Location Report
The Location report under Audience can tell you where your traffic is coming from:
countries, states, cities, etc.
This can be useful for: Geotargeted campaigns, persona development

21. The Mobile Overview Report
The Mobile Overview report under Audience, can tell you more about the types of
devices which are accessing your site, which can help drive improvements in mobile
marketing and web development.

22. The Channel Report
The Channels report under Acquisition, gives you macro level insights into the various
channels you are using to attract traffic to your website.

23. • Organic Search: SEO Traffic from search engines
• Email: links in email campaigns
• Direct: users enter the URL directly in the browser
• Referral: traffic from other sites yours is linked on
• Social: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• Paid Search: Google AdWords, Bing ads, etc.
The Channel Report is crucial to helping you ascertain
which of your marketing initiatives are having the most
success.
What are the main Channels?

24. The All Traffic Report
The All Traffic report under Acquisition, gives you micro level insights into the various
sources of traffic your website is receiving. Notice how we are able to track off line
Newspaper traffic and PPC initiatives on Facebook.

25. The AdWords Campaign Report
Notice how AdWords has a full section of reports which are available under
Acquisition. You will need to link Google AdWords and Google Analytics to have these
reports populated. For those of you using AdWords, it would be important not to rely
only on the data available in the Google AdWords interface.

26. The Social Overview Report
The Social Overview report under Acquisition, gives you a snapshot of how your social
media channels are performing.

27. The Queries Report
The Queries report under Acquisition, provides organic or SEO keyword level
information. You can see what keywords your website is generating impressions and
clicks from, and know what is your average position on Google. You will need to link the
Search Console and Google Analytics to have these reports populated.

28. The All Pages Report
The All Pages report under Behavior, gives you page by page insights including how
often it’s been viewed, the average time spent on that page, the bounce rate and the
page value. The page value gives you an indication of the propensity of a user to
convert on one of your goals after seeing that particular page.

29. The Landing Pages Report
The Landing Pages report under Behavior provides information on the first pages users
see or land on. The definition of landing page is the first page a user lands on.

30. The All Pages Navigation Summary Report
The All Pages Navigation Summary report under Behavior provides detailed insights on
which pages users visited before and after a particular page. You will also know what
percentage of users enter and exit that page. This is one of my favorite reports J

31. The Goals Overview report under Conversions, provides a summary view of the total
number of conversions and conversion rate.
The Goals Overview Report

32. The Reverse Goal Path report under Conversions tells you which pages were seen prior
to converting, which can help indicate your most valuable and engaging content.
The Goals Overview Report

33. The Funnel Visualisation report under Conversions gives you insights on how effective
your conversion page is. In this example, 54% of sessions decided to fill out the form
and convert!
The Funnel Visualization Report

34. Google Analytics URL Builder
• Use the URL builder to manually
tag URLs you will use in specific
campaigns.
• By creating unique URLs for
specific campaigns, the data will be
sent to GA account every a user
clicks one of these links
• You can use URL shorteners or
redirects to make these more user
friendly!

35. Tracking your Campaigns with the URL Builder
The yellow traffic sources were all built using the URL builder. None of them would be
generated natively without the help of this tool.

36. Tracking your Facebook Ads Campaigns
• Use the URL builder
to manually tag URLs
you will use in
specific campaigns.
• Use the Campaign
Secondary dimension
to know which are
performing

37. • Measurement Plan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpDA3XaELq
s&feature=youtu.be
• URL Builder:
• https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-
builder/
• Google Analytics Training:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/learn/
Google Analytics Resources

38. • I’m easy to reach at:
Philippe Taza
Tel: 514-312-3968 ext:104
ptaza@higher-education-marketing.com
www.higher-education-marketing.com
https://twitter.com/PhilippeTaza
Have questions about Google Analytics?