Monday, September 11, 2017

Google Analytics Vs. HubSpot



Google Analytics
            Google Analytics (product) is a free software-as-a-service web analytics product developed, offered and maintained by Google. The product's origins lie in Google's acquisition of Urchin, a web analytics product that remains in existence today; Urchin is a premium (paid) web analytics product that is not hosted (SaaS) but rather installed by the customer on the hardware of their choosing. Google Analytics excels at showing visitor behavior on the visit level, which is to say that it offers spectacular counts of visits, visitors and completed events (as configured) for any date range.” (Odonnell,2011).
            Google analytics allows you to create goals in order to measure interactions, audiences, and visitors to your site to better understand your audience and how they view what you are trying to communicate. For example, Belk a southern based department store can measure where their audience generates from along with the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Google analytics also allows you to track events in order to see how your audience is interacting with your site and also allows you to see if there are any errors on your site that may prevent the audience from experiencing the full effect of your website or experiencing site errors. Another great aspect of Google analytics is the segmentation features. “This feature allows you to filter the data in the reports you see to only include visitors meeting certain criteria. It is the tip of the iceberg, but to give you an idea of the power of this feature, such criteria might include: where visitors came from, what content the visitors saw first during that visit, what time of day they visited, where the visitors live, how many pages the visitors saw. “(Odonnell,2011).

HubSpot
“HubSpot is a platform that brings together every possible marketing and distribution tactic you need in order to attract and convert leads on your website. This is often referred to as inbound marketing. Rather than push unwanted traditional marketing messages to an unsuspecting audience through outbound methods (– i.e. direct mail, print and TV advertisements, cold calling, etc.) inbound strategies focus on attracting the right type of prospects to you.  Inbound marketing tools and tactics include: blogging, social media, search engine optimization, and landing pages. HubSpot allows you to do all of these things using the software, and provides tools for doing them successfully. Sure, I could've simply drafted up this post and hit publish with little regard for optimal performance, but HubSpot makes that easy to do.” (Bonini,2014). HubSpot allows you to convert leads by optimizing each page in a concise manner segmenting and targeting specific audiences, this platform allows you to do this all with one tool.  In addition, HubSpot is constantly growing and is committed to the customer.
Comparisons
            Google analytics and HubSpot can play nicely together making them both ideal for analyzing specific metrics that each platform has strengths in. Both platforms can provide website visits, page interaction, referral sources, and conversions. Based on my research as I am not familiar with the HubSpot tool and just familiarizing myself with the Google analytics tool there are many more differences then comparisons. Both tools provide useful information but the consensus seems as if Google analytics is more utilized by seasoned digital marketers.


Contrasts
Google analytics and HubSpot have several differences. Google analytics is a free platform in which a user can manipulate reports in a way they see fit to measure what they are tracking whereas HubSpot is a paid platform with a user-friendly interface but not as much reporting flexibility. HubSpot assists marketers more so with conversion and engagement while Google analytics does not. HubSpot utilizes more ecom reporting and allows you to track your online audience more in depth. HubSpot also allows its user to analyze their marketing efforts more in depth then Google analytics. HubSpot seems to be a bit more generic reporting wise as you cannot build as many reports as you can with Google analytics, however, this makes it easier to interpret and somewhat more user friendly for beginner analytics users. While HubSpot is more user friendly and not as in-depth Google analytics allows you to track more traffic information. Google analytics allows the user to create more in-depth reporting that may allow the user the flexibility needed to measure specific metrics. 

Conclusion
In conclusion both HubSpot and Google Analytics offer many metrics that can be utilized to measure many different things depending on what is needed. HubSpot seems to be more user friendly while Google analytics seems to be more in depth. Both platforms offer many options to both large and small businesses based on the level of the user and the metrics to measure. It seems almost unanimous that Google analytics is the preferred platform in the industry although it can be used in conjunction with HubSpot. “At the end of the day, due to its ease of implementation and no price tag, there’s not an excuse I can think of as to why Google Analytics shouldn’t be used with every website. Even the most technophobic web owner will be able to find at least SOME value in its reporting features. Advanced users will have the ability to dive deep into the platform and discover really powerful insights.” (Long, 2015).


References
Bonini, J. (2014). What is HubSpot? Impactbnd. Retrieved September 11, 2017 from
https://www.impactbnd.com/what-is-hubspot




Long, C. (2015). Google Analytics Vs. HubSpot: Which Is Better? PromFromGo. Internet
Marketing. Retrieved September11, 2017 from https://profromgo.com/blog/google-analytics-vs-hubspot-which-is-better/    



Odonnell, C. (2011). What is Google Analytics and what it is used for? Quora. Retrieved
 

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