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What to Track – How to Measure the Success of Your Online Marketing by Examining Acquisition and Audience (part 2 of 3)

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“Why should I bother looking at Google Analytics?  I’m getting applications, so people are obviously visiting my site!” 

That may be…but are they from the right types of candidates in the right locations?

In my first post in this series, I explained how to look at overall website traffic and visitor behavior. Today, I want to focus on acquisition and audience – two very important metrics for your staffing company, if you want to ensure you’re attracting the right candidates.

Acquisition, Audience and Applications

Data analysis and marketing metrics are extremely important for staffing companies as they can let you know a lot about your website visitors:  Are the right people visiting your site?  Where are they from?  Where are your applicants coming from?

Acquisition – Where is Website Traffic Coming From?

Tracking how web visitors come to your site gives you a good indication of what activities are adding value in your marketing and recruiting mix, and which channels aren’t performing.

To track this in Google Analytics, click on Acquisition>Overview. This offers a high-level overview of where traffic is coming from, and allows you to dig deeper into individual sources of traffic.

Here are some key things to look for:

  • Look for month to month, quarter to quarter, and year to year trends in overall traffic.
  • When you see big increases or decreases dig deeper to find out why.
  • Dig deeper into individual traffic sources (see video below).
  • Determine what online platforms are adding value, or where traffic is lacking.

Watch Our How-To Video on Analyzing Visitor Acquisition

Audience Geography – Are You Getting the Right Traffic from the Right Locations?

Are you a local staffing company that works in one specific market? Or, are a you a regional firm looking to compare traffic for different locations? To track the geographic regions you are getting traffic from you can visit Audience>Geo>Location in Google Analytics. Here’s what to look at:

  • What countries are driving traffic. If you’re not an International business and 50% of your traffic is coming from overseas, you need to dig deeper.
  • Drill down by city to identify if the markets you serve are generating traffic.
  • Compare month to month and year to year to look for traffic changes in different cities.
  • If you have several offices in different cities, identify your top performers and compare marketing tactics in those offices to identify what worked best.

Watch Our How-To Video on Analyzing Audience Geography

Applications – Where are Job Applications Coming From?

To make sure your recruitment advertising dollars are being spent in the right places, you need a plan in place to effectively track the source of applications. Google Analytics can help with this. To track this, you’ll need to visit: Behavior>All Pages>[Your Application] and then use a “Secondary Dimension” to identify a specific source. Here’s more detail on how to use this report:

Watch Our How-To Video on Analyzing Application Sources

Up Next:  What about social media?  What about conversions?

My next installment will help you dig further into whether social media is actually driving traffic to your website and the paths or actions visitors take when they are on your site.

Don’t want to wait for the next post to publish?  Download the Idea Club article, “How staffing companies measure marketing success” now!

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