Distinguishing between your visitor channel’s separate behavior patterns is key to analysing your market. We all know brand and non-brand paid search terms typically perform very differently and analysis of these campaigns is regularly done separately. With the latest update from Google Analytics making this Branded analysis easier through Acquisition channels, you may be thinking; ‘Why do I need to add this into my Analytics reporting, I have my branded campaigns set up and serving me nicely!’
Arguably, the highlight in the new feature is very easy to use ‘Management of Brand Terms’. Now found under Channel Settings in the Admin tab, you can manage the list of keywords to be included in the Brand Paid Search Channel. Review the terms that Google identifies as your brand and either accept or decline each term as you see fit. Adding other brand terms that aren’t included already, such as misspellings or other brand names is quick and easy. Giving you the power to differentiate branded from non-branded on your own terms helps paint a more accurate picture in Analytics of what you see as ‘your brand’.
It’s important to separately analyse the performance of ‘Brand’ and ‘Generic’ paid search terms which may have highly different performance metrics. But what separates a Brand Campaign from your Brand Channels in Analytics? By setting up your Brand Paid Search channel, you have access to dive deeper into the conversions, acquisition and user behavior statistics provided by Analytics for your paid visitors.
Awkward custom segments and filter strings are a nightmare in reporting, I’d recommend checking out our piece on 5 PPC Mistakes That are Costing You Conversions, if you don’t feel confident using some of the areas of Adwords, and keeping your Branded traffic at a top level through channels enables easy reporting and quick analysis.
If you have previously changed the Default Channel Grouping, you can update your report to additionally include the new channels by using the new query type filters Brand and Generic. For a peace of mind PPC project, Ricemedia can help guide and develop your PPC Strategy to improve your paid performance metrics and campaigns.
Now we just need this change to apply for organic traffic too and we can all sleep soundly!
