How To Search For Old Posts On Google+

I am writing this short post because I have noticed a growing number of people who constantly complain about Google+'s search feature.   

Yes, some folks actually do complain about the Google+ search feature!!! Here's a recent one, in a discussion on Mike Allton's post on G+ 

Yeah, wow! I know!
I find it pretty amazing as well!!!

So anyway, I decided to share this simple tutorial on how to make use of the Google+ search feature to find posts that are 3 days old or those that are 3 years old. 

But let me quickly point out to those who actually compare with Facebook, that first of all, even though I have really come to like G+, I am not one of those people who get combative in favour of G+ against Facebook or any other network. To be honest, I couldn't care less what side ends up winning the Fan Wars; Just like I couldn't care less who "eventually won" the iOS vs. Android Fan Wars, and all of those shenanigans.

By the way, if you are African, and you are new to Google+, please take a look at this post. You might also want to look at my ZMOT article if you are a social media marketer or other digital marketer of sorts. 

STOP COMPARING APPLES TO LOLLIPOPS!

So having said all that let me now clarify the unnecessary Facebook/G+ comparison:

I know without a doubt that the Facebook search feature is by far the most wretched of all social network search features. i.e. their desktop search on Facebook (I don't use Facebook on smartphones, but I guess if it sucks on desktop, then surely it must also..........). 

I am willing to bet that what those folks mean by "easily finding previous posts on Facebook", is that they merely go through their notifications to find old posts. 

And yes indeed, Google+ purges notifications after you have treated them (i.e. visited the post you are being notified about). 

So this poses a problem to a user who probably has a reason to return to a post he/she had been engaging with, but is not currently getting any attention (and therefore not triggering any new notifications).
To solve this problem from the perspective a Facebook user is pretty simple:

Simply click on your Notifications icon on your Google+ and scroll down to select "Previously read" at the bottom, and voila!!! 
You are just as you were on Facebook! 
Yeepee!!!! 
:(

Google+ Ninjas Be Finding Sh*t All Day.....

So now I want to talk to you about becoming much more of a "finder" than you could have ever dreamed of being on Facebook or any other social network:

Say you want to find some very interesting and very heated argument you had about Tesla Motors and Solar City on some guy's post that you don't even know or follow, and it happened sometime in 2013. 

Please! Attempt to tell me you have a prayer of finding such on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn?!

Now let me show you how to do it:

Searching is about strings or keywords (for now). So in the G+ search bar, you would need to remember certain keywords (the more unique they are the better).

You could pick [Tesla]; you could pick [SolarCity]; you could pick [name of poster] (if you remember their name - especially if he had some unique name like Wolfgang Bohemian or something. lol ). 
It could also help if some term like [Lithium-Ion] or [fossil-fuel] was repeated by you are some others within the comments. Then finally you would need to add [your name], but only if you participated in the comments of the post. So 3 to 5 keywords should take you to that post with ease. Try it!

Here's an example from how I found the post I mentioned earlier:

This next example is one where I hadn't engaged on the post. It only flashed by on my stream, and I came back the next day to look for it. And voila!

Again, let me say you can try it with this very post (i.e. the one attached to this article > Here <  )

If you want to find this post 4 years from now, simply go to G+ search and type [Rotimi Orims] + [Google+ Facebook Search] + [Your name].
If you are not following me, and you did not comment on it, then try it this way:
[Rotimi Orims] + [Google+ Facebook Search] + [the name of the person who surfaced it into your stream] (they either liked it or commented on it).
Or you may add the term [Search Africa] in it as well.

The idea is that, if the post was memorable enough to make you want to take another look at it, then surely if you tried a bit harder, you would remember some keywords and terms that were used in it or in its comments!
And you would find it easily......on Google+

By the way, if you want to become a Ninja-Shogun-Samurai Google+ searcher (Translated: If you want to learn more useful tips) then you can turn to this resource here. 



Thanks for reading.


If you have anything to add to this (and I am sure there is much to add) please feel free to do so. Also feel free to ask any questions about anything you like. You would also find I am quite open to harsh criticism and interrogation, if that's what you prefer. ;)

The Similarities Between Football Analysis And Web Analytics

What Does Football Analysis Have In Common With Web Analytics?

Plenty!

Give me a chance to entertain you a bit, and inform you a bit, and teach you a bit about how soccer games can be analyzed almost as accurately as we analyze the performance of websites using Google Analytics, or other digital analytics tools.

In a previous article I spoke about attribution in Google Analytics using some famous Spanish soccer teams as examples. 
I am sure that article was a bit difficult to understand, so I will try harder to make this one a bit easier for those who know little to nothing about web analysis.

I want to draw your attention to the recent European Champions League match between FC Bayern Munich and Real Madrid that took place on April 29, 2014.

It was a very close match but it ended 4 - 0 in favor of Real Madrid.

What was that again?!

If it ended 4-0 for Real Madrid, then why would I say that it was a very close match?

Well, I said so because I am an analyst not a mere football fan.

I do not base my understanding of the game on just the outcome of a few matches, but I try hard to understand every separate event that takes place within the 90 minutes of the match as they occur, and discover patterns and meanings that repeat themselves across a wide number of football matches in general.

This behavior in digital web analytics is like focusing on micro-conversions instead of focusing on macro-conversions.

Okay, here’s a quick description:

Macro-Conversion – 
This is something that occurs on a website that is very important to your business, like a transaction (e.g. someone purchased a pair of shoes on your website); or it could be an additional subscription to your blog, if you are a blogger. It may also be that a visitor to your site, found and used your phone number to make inquiry about your services. 

Therefore, in soccer, we can say that a macro-conversion occurs when a goal is scored. That should be simple enough. 

Micro-Conversions – 
Now these are measurable steps that a visitor takes on your website on the way to a macro-conversion.  
It is important to measure micro-conversions because it will give you a clearer picture on how to optimize your website as well as your marketing campaigns in such a way that they help your visitors along their journey to macro-conversions more easily.

Examples of web micro-conversions could be when a user visits your website and sees some shoes you are selling, and then clicks to see a larger image of the shoes. Or when the visitor also clicks on the Special Price Offer button for the same pair of shoes. 

Such actions give you insight into the fact that that customer is at the very least mildly interested in those shoes, even when they did not end up purchasing it.

So, micro-conversions in football would be the things that happen during the build up to a goal.

1. a defensive interception from Sergio Ramos, who gives a quick and accurate pass to Angel DiMaria,

2. an even quicker one-two by DiMaria with Karim Benzema through the left flank,

3. Next a spectacular left-footed cross from DiMaria down the left flank.

4. Headed down by Gareth Bale for....

Cristiano Ronaldo to blast the ball into the net for a goal. Which would be the Macro-conversion in this case.

I hope that was easy to understand?
(For a much deeper comparison of Analytics and Football Analysis, see my other article here ◄)

Cristiano Ronaldo' enjoyed a lot of fantastic assisted balls from Angel DiMaria during the LaDecima season , after Carlo Ancelotti's reprisal of the Argentinian's role in the team.

Now back to the matter at hand:

Why I say the game between Bayern & Real Madrid was a very close one.

It is simple, most soccer pundits today, begin to analyze football from the Final score, and then go back to explain the game with that bias.

I do the opposite. 

I rate a team’s performance by the events of 90 minutes, often times irrespective of the number of goals scored. 
In fact, I often try to assume what would have happened if no goals had been scored... how I would describe the game then.

In fact, most of the members of my community True Football Analysts have gotten used to (or tired of) me arguing about this issue over and over again by now.

I have come to accept that, there was, there is, and there always will be a significant amount of luck that affects how goals are scored in soccer.
And one goal that goes in by luck can easily change how the rest of the match plays out. 

For example, how many times does Sergio Ramos score two headed goals in a month? Not to talk of in one match? 
Yet, by the time Bayern Munich tried hard to reply those two goals, all that happened was they suffered a painful counter-attack goal from Cristiano Ronaldo.

Does this suddenly mean that Bayern have suddenly become a poor team?

Certainly not! 

Or does it really mean that Real Madrid play so much better than they did against Bayern at home (in Spain) where they won by just 1 - 0 ?

Of course not!

The stats of both legs of the tie (from UEFA.com) are almost completely identical.

In game 1 Real Madrid had 7 shots on target and only 36% ball possession. While they had the exact same numbers in game two as well....Only this time, 4 of those 7 attempts ended up becoming macro-conversions in instead of 1.

But what I find to be so amazing is the fact that Real Madrid’s chances created in the first leg looked much more dangerous (to me) than at least 3 of the ones that went in in game 2 (you may need to refer to highlights of both matches to understand what I mean here).

Now, I believe that Real Madrid deserved to win both games, no doubt. Ignore the fact that I am a Madridista (since 1990). 
Yet, doing proper analysis helps me to develop a system of understanding patterns that may happen repeatably, and hence, make football matches reasonably more predictable to me. Doing proper analysis is also tons of fun for me. :-)

Analysis Is For Predictability

But, anyway, at a certain level, football can be indeed very predictable:

Imagine, if you lined up a star-studded squad like Real, Bayern Munich, or Barcelona against a Canadian secondary school soccer team? You can bet there is going to be a 15-0 thrashing in that one.....

But things start getting less predictable as we gradually reduce the disparity between each sets of players.  We look at second division sides with professional footballers: they would also most likely be thrashed by Madrid, but not as badly as the Canadian high school squad. 

Then you come to the lower class LaLiga sides like Osasuna and Rayo Vallecano. 
We always expect Real Madrid to thrash such teams as well, but it doesn’t always happen like that. Occasionally, the Osasunas actually get to beat Madrid.

And when we come to opponents like Barcelona or Bayern, that's when we see the predictability really blurring out.

This is the stage when you need to pay greater attention to the finer details of a match, in order to know why a team may have lost or won. 
If you want to keep winning the big games, you would need to learn how to properly analyze.

Your accurate analysis is what helps you optimize on these fine details and improve your team.
I honestly doubt that many professional coaches today do that so well. :-)

It Is Really About Increasing The Chances

But anyway, in web analytics, we optimize our site based on what we have learned from the customer journey and behavior. 

We examine their clicks and behavioral trends on our websites, and this gives us context on what they may have been trying to do or why they are not doing it. (Notice I use that word may, quite frequently)

By properly analyzing the micro-conversions in the analytics reports, we are able to increase our chances of knowing what is actually going on with the visitors on our sites. And this can lead to us taking concrete steps towards helping customers to actually purchase something. Or score a goal. :-)

Just like a good coach will do in football match to ensure that he increases the chances of his team scoring goals and preventing others from scoring against them. 

It requires proper analysis.
And for that, you need a healthy dose of skepticism in your system. And if you can get that by drinking something, then I suggest you do so before becoming an analyst.

Proper analysis for me is about understanding of the proper context of each scenario. You should not just assume that because you recently increased your Facebook advertising, it therefore means that Facebook is responsible for the soaring page views and micro-conversions on your site.

You must painstakingly try to know what other stuff could have possibly affected your site's popularity.

Practice Makes Perfect

So here are some examples of the micro-conversions needed to maintain repeated victories in football. 
Can you try to imagine what could replace each one when it comes to your digital marketing campaigns for your business?

1. You would need to work on your team’s ball possession. This is built through team work, good individual ball control across the team, and confidence.

Forget the fact that FC Barcelona had better BP and lost to Bayern Munich over two legs some last year, or that Bayern Munich had even better BP but lost to Real Madrid over two legs this time. 
The truth is that both of these clubs win a lot more matches than they lose. And they almost always drive the fear of God into most of their opponents hearts with this dominant ball possession.

2. Other micro conversions include having players who constantly LOOK UP while they move with the ball, to spot the best positioned players to pass the ball to. 
They shouldn’t just pass to the first one they see. 
So not all passing is good passing.

3. It pays to have some players who are very good in the air, with heading balls. Both in defense and in attack.

4. Accurate shooters (who usually keep their shots below the crossbar, and often close to either sides of the posts).

5. Great dribblers are also very good in unlocking tight defenses, by causing them to panic and commit fouls, and also by drawing them away from marking the dribbler's team mates.

6. Ball Winners who recover quickly to help the defense are a very precious commodity indeed.

Trying to keep your team playing with these elements intact and working, is a very difficult task indeed (Especially after your team has won so much and achieved so much very recently). 

But the truth is that any team that consistently tries to maintain a highly optimized set of micro-conversions would find itself winning almost every game it plays. 

Eventhough it may experience the occasional unfortunate 4-0, 3-0 or even 7-1 defeats, the reality is that, if you can analyze a team’s micro-conversions very well and do the required "engineering" to improve them, then you would be a winner MORE times than a loser. And the same goes for websites.

If you can identify the weak links in their passing game, how they fail with ball control, or where they fail in ball winning or why the strikers don’t finish properly, then you are on your way to becoming an outstanding manager.

Likewise, if you are frequently reading your analytics reports in the right context to know...

- where your websites visitors are coming from?
- how many people actually visit your website?
- are they all human?
- which of your pages do they usually seem to gravitate towards?
- which websites sends the most visitors to you?
- how many of your visitors leave immediately they arrive?
- how long visitors spend on your pages on average?
- can you know if people ALMOST bought something on your website?

If you do stuff to answer these kinds of questions, or at least hire someone who will do them conscientiously for you, then you'll gradually become an insightful businessman in your industry. Believe me.

But at the end of the day, let’s face it, neither Jose Mourinho, nor Pep Guardiola, nor Carlo Ancelotti, is going to desire to manage a club like Sunderland in England or Ancona in Italy. 

No way! 

They are going to move to teams that are already packed with gifted players like Angel DiMaria, Frank Ribery, Oscar, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Leo Messi. 
The same way it is generally better in online marketing to use digital analysis along with great marketing strategies and paid (but track-able) advertising campaigns.

Thanks for reading.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. I will surely read them and get back to you. 
Also visit my other, deeper article on the same subject.

MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT THESE LINKS:

1) We are True Football Analysts 

2) We have a Facebook Group (the facebook Group is now closed, but if you send two of the Admins, Tal Baryosef or myself a private message saying that you found us through this blog post, we will surely let you in.

3) We also have a much younger GooglePlus community which is open to the public and currently needs level-headed soccer enthusiats as Moderators. Take a look.  

Zero Moment Of Truth Part 2 : The Enthusiast

In my prequel to this post, I did a few introductions and tried to give you some ideas as to how important it is for you to take the Zero Moment Of Truth seriously. In this article I am going to try to guide you into thinking with a ZMOT mindset, and in to realizing how that can greatly improve your marketing efforts. 

The idea behind this second part of my post is to try to start you on a journey of becoming a ZMOT enthusiast like myself. Because by first becoming enthusiastic about the ZMOT, you would indeed learn much quicker, what you need in order to gain the necessary advantage for your business, your brand  or your product in this new digital age. 

Now some of the actual experts of this topic like Jim Lecinsky, Todd Pollack and Brian Solis have released articles and books that actually explain this concept much more indepth. 
But the dimension that I bring as a very keen enthusiast, is such that anything I write, I try my possible best to make you (the African reader) understand what we are talking about, and how you could easily bring it into reality in our environment.

1. Mobile Is A Must

One day, I was asked a question by a hopeful blogger. He asked, "Even if people want to use the internet to read and learn, the NEPA (electricity) problems in Nigeria make it so difficult for most People. So how can I find people to even read my blog?"  

So I told him that there was a relatively easy way to fix that problem. But he quickly added, "and you know that most people cannot even afford laptops or iPads".
So I said that that was even what makes my solution more of an advantage for him, if he could implement it.

"So what is this magic solution of yours"?

And I told him to have a mobile optimization plan! 

I know that may sound too simplistic, but then just try to wrap your head around the scenario that the vast majority of websites in Nigeria (I cannot say much about the rest of Africa yet) don't account for mobile users. 

And yet, from a marketer's perspective, you wonder why mobile internet is not more or less compulsory in Nigeria. 

No wonder Facebook usage in Nigeria is so phenomenal?
Because Facebook is one of only a few websites known by Nigerians to have a version that is comfortably responsive to mobile phones of different screen sizes. This point cannot be over-emphasized.

Meanwhile, the reasons why Americans and Europeans use smartphones to surf the web may be indeed very different from the reasons why Nigerians do. Nevertheless, what is certain is that smartphones have become key players in this whole global online struggle for our attention. 

Therefore if you are doing business and you wish to attract large amounts of people (whether American or Nigerian; whether for your corporate branding, or for lead generation, or for online retail) your website has to be able to communicate clearly through a mobile phone interface. Not to mention the added advantage you get as a mobile phone user can instantly make a call to your business, or at least store your phone number, when he sees your contact page on your site.

2. Social Media Re-visitation

Ever since people realized that social media networks were useful for marketing, we have been seeing people just going about dropping links and promoting stuff everywhere like crazy. 

Some of us have clearly forgotten the "social" in this whole social media thing. So we spend so much unnecessary energy dropping links all over the social sites, presuming that others are using the internet for the purpose of searching for promotional links to click on. 

ZMOT mindedness makes you a lot more creative and much more effective with your social media marketing campaigns. It opens your eyes to see what many other digital marketers don't see. It will help you remember or realize that you yourself don't go around looking for links to click on.

There is always an important trigger that gets you to click on a link. 

Zero Moment reasoning also protects you from coming into that irrational mindset of those marketers who would do anything to see their website rank on the Top of Google Search result pages; As if ranking on the Top of search automatically means that people would throw their hard earned money at your website.

A ZMOT minded marketer understands that there are more than one way to catch a fish. 
For example, I can show you a nifty way of using a combination of Facebook, Google+ and Youtube to do a lot of damage, even if you don't have a website. I talk more about using video for ZMOT warfare in this article here.
But if I started to explain those things here now, this article could become a book. I am always reachable at the Digital Africa Community. There I can take questions about ZMOT, FMOT and other areas of digital marketing.

Now there are many other techniques to ZMOT readiness like using AdWords PPC campaigns and one magical thing they call Remarketing, or taking advantage of Affiliate bloggers, and my own personal addition, the use of digital print and direct mail solutions. But for the sake of your time reading this article, the 3rd and last tactic I will mention here is learning how to stalk users at the review sites.   

3. Raptness To Reviews

Again, I'm not sure I know how people behave in Ghana or South Africa, but here in Nigeria, I know that word of mouth is an extremely powerful form of product promotion. So if you can put words into Mr A's mouth, that could easily lead to Mr B buying your product.

I mean, I have literally seen people come to a store specifically to purchase an iPhone, and right there in an instant, they ask some other customer for his advice, and he suddenly turns into a smartphone expert; And before you know it, the lady who came to buy an iPhone4 is going home with her brand new Blackberry Z10.

In fact, more or less, everyone in this country is a consulting physician (both medical and trado-medical).
You feel slight dizziness and a throbbing headache? Your next door neighbor, the bank manager, prescribes an anti-biotic for you. Just like that!

So whether you realize it or not, most of your potential clients or customers are easily susceptible to influence from others. At some point in their journey, they could easily have been your customer. But along the way, someone prescribed an alternative for them.
And this behavior is happening on the internet as well, so it is not wise to ignore it. You must learn how to benefit from it. 

You might not be able to prevent or rescue every one of your potential customers from those self-appointed experts, but there are ways that you can work on wrestling some of them back to your own offering. And of course, you can generate your own "experts".

In this other scenario, try to imagine you didn't log out of your Yahoomail, before you visited the Trip Advisor website to check out affordables hotels in Abuja. Incidentally, your Facebook account is associated to your Yahoomail.

Now you are gazing at the hotel at the top of the page that costs only N5000 per night; it looks like a good option for you. Then suddenly you notice that some people you know have already spent time at some other hotel below, and they gave it very good reviews. It costs only N400 more than the one you first noticed. And these people you know are people you really respect.

This could happen because Trip Advisor is using your Facebook friends list, and it doesn't even occur to you what's going on, or why they are showing you what your friends have reviewed.

This is a real ZMOT phenomenon. It happens everyday, and nobody really cares to ask why.
But what you should be asking is, how do I capitalize on it?
That should be he question every merchant is asking in this era....how do I win the zero moment of truth?

And the more you think and strategize in this mind frame, the more likely you would come up with answers for your digital business goals. The technology is available to help you win some of the battles, you just have to discover what they are, how they work, and how to use them. 
The more you actively take part in ZMOT warfare, the more you'll learn; and the more new tools you would discover. This is my advice to you if you have a small business. 

However, if yours is a large company that can afford it, it is best you hire a ZMOT Coordinator who is, at least, handy with his AdWords and Google Analytics, and has a ZMOT mindset. 

ZMOT ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH Infographic-Shoppers' Path to Purchase via Cool Daily Infographics

Now, someone might ask, "hey why do I need a consultant who claims to be ZMOT-savvy?", "Can't I just give this article you've written here to my already existing traditional marketing department to handle"? 

Well, you could try that....But you should be careful about how they run with it. Afterall, those guys are coming from a mindset that is quite different from ours. A mindset where so many boundaries and limitations exist. 

So someone else could say, "Or I could even read through this article several times over, add some extra research, and do it all by myself?"

Well, actually you could. And in fact I am hoping you would. 
I am hoping that all those who pay attention to my articles would become ZMOT-minded marketers, and do their own marketing by themselves one day. This would open up huge opportunities for me with the larger businesses, who are always the slowest to adopt these kinds of ideas. 
However, their current paradigm is such that they always seem to want to minimize risk and pay more attention to financial budgeting, rather than statistical and analytics data.

So they are not likely to take a chance on investing on a ZMOT-manager or an inhouse digital marketing team until they see the result of my ZMOT strategies through those who have used it and profited from it, at lower levels. 

Yet, this leaves you, the small or mid-sized business owner, with the opportunity to become enthusiastic enough about the ZMOT to learn how to get a head-start and an advantage for your self, and hopefully taking some of their market share while they are still asleep.



Thanks for reading.
Feel free to drop a comment or question below. I'm always here to assist. Also consider reading my post defining ZMOT in Nigeria, using Nigerian examples.

Google Analytics, Marketing Attribution and the True Football Analyst:

Now, it would probably amaze some of you that I want to relate web analytics with football analysis! Well, I am doing so because I live in Nigeria in Africa and there isn't that much "analyzing of websites" going on in this part of the world, I can tell you that much! And this is mainly because most business owners haven't yet come to the realization that they need to analyze their effectiveness. 

So what I am going to do with this article, is try to relate this concept of Analytics to another one that practically all African people (Nigerians especially) know so well....

GAFC - GOOGLE ANALYTICS FOOTBALL CLUB!

Now, I would first need to quickly point out that I will be discussing soccer, and not the NFL. In short, European football and not American Football. Okay that wasn’t shorter, but I'm sure you get the point.
I must also mention that, unlike almost every soccer fan I’ve met, I am the very rare type that actually hates to “analyze” why a team won or lost a football match after the 90 minutes have been completed. So often times I say things that shock practically everyone that call themselves football fans.

For example, I still insist that Diego Maradonna’s Argentina squad in 2010 was tactically one of the best since 1994. In fact I consider Jose peckermann's 2006 squad the only one better in that time frame. A claim that not one human being I know agrees with.
But I don’t care about that; it’s not my problem….they are the ones who need to open their eyes. Hahaha!

Anyway, seriously, you should also know that I never judge the performance of a soccer team according to the number of goals that were counted for or against them at the end of one single game. So my take is that unpredictable things happen during the course of 90 minutes that sometimes make the beautiful game of football seem to resemble an adulterous whore. Do pardon the illustration.

But now let me quickly get back to this discussion and define Marketing Attribution and Google Analytics so that the football fans reading this article can catch up with what I am about to introduce to you geeks out there:

WHAT ARE THE KEY CONCEPTS?

Google Analytics is a powerful instrument that is used for measuring a website’s activities, like visits, clicks, and the defined goals that may have been setup by the website owner.
These activities need to be measured when you decide to start using your website as a marketing, branding or promotional instrument for your business or whatever cause the website was built for.

So burn this in: A website shouldn't be just a dummy in cyberspace that most companies around you have one of and so you feel you must therefore have one yourself.
You’ve completely missed the point, if you go this way.


Visits and Clicks to your website can come from any part of Africa or the world at large. They can be attracted by your brand name, or they can be attracted by your website’s marketing strategies and tactics. Either way, once they’ve come to your website, chances are, you can get them to buy your products, visit your shop or direct their colleagues to it, subscribe to your articles, and even promote your brand for you. It all depends on how you much you are willing to get out of digital marketing.

Conversions are the completion of goals that are specified by the website’s owner as important things he would like visitors to do while on his site. These goals will depend completely on whatever is the nature of your business, and they will be the major things that you would be measuring with Google Analytics. Additionally, if you have an e-commerce website, these goals would primarily be the actual purchases of items made by online customers on your site.

So Google Analytics is like an instrument of forensic examination that helps you scrutinize your website’s performance in terms of how well it is achieving its GOALS (just like in soccer you know?). It is the only way to know for sure, what and where you need to make improvements so that your website can perk-up on its performance and begin to achieve those goals, and reach for greater goals.

But the aspect of Google Analytics that I really wish to discuss today is Marketing Attribution. 

Along with Advanced Event Tracking, Attribution is one of the least mentioned topics in GA by the so-called digital marketing "experts" in Nigeria. I have also searched online for articles on this topic by other digital marketing professionals from the African continent; sadly, I've found none.

Nevertheless, the impact of Attribution (when it is well done) on your website and your entire business could be quite useful in creating quite a mismatch between you and your competition on the digital frontier.

So without further ado, Attribution is about giving value to different channels within your overall marketing campaign so that you can get a clearer understanding of how effective each of the various channels or “players” in your marketing efforts are performing.

We use Attribution Modeling because often times digital marketers think that one aspect of their marketing strategy is working better than other channels, and as a result they tend to focus so much effort on that particular medium at the detriment of other channels. The potential problem here is that if you are mistaken with this assumption, then your marketing campaigns may never reach their full potential.

WHO WOULD RELATE SUCH THINGS TOGETHER?

So let's go back to football for a while:

Now, if you were to take away both Mezut Ozil and Angel DiMaria from Real Madrid FC, you could be surprised that Cristiano Ronaldo would score fewer goals than you know him to score. 
I could have said the same about Iniesta and Xavi on Leonel Messi, but I have seen otherwise.

Anyway I don’t mean to start an argument here, I am only pointing out that it is important for you to learn how credit should be shared in your marketing campaigns. And thankfully, your marketing campaigns don’t have huge egos. Hahaha!

And for those who wish to argue football, you can join my football community on Google+. But you should be warned that there are many who consider me a real rabble-rouser, who became an obsessive football watcher when I was 16 yrs old.

I had started disagreeing vehemently with the usual British commentators and studio pundits from when I was about 20, and since then I have very seldom ever taken their kind of football analyses seriously.

By the time I was 22, I was watching some matches 3 to 5 times over, just so that I could discover patterns in certain formations. It even got to a point where I preferred watching a recorded game to a live one; since in a recorded match, you may easily press review to understand why a player made a certain move (whether it was a fluke or a calculated knack of genius).

In any event, the relevance of all I am saying is that (and this is just my opinion) Attribution in Google Analytics also requires a similar kind of obsessive behavior in paying attention to analytics data. When I first started using GA, I thought it was extremely complex and boring. But the trick was to tarry and then learn first to pay attention to the simpler details before graduating to the more advanced metrics. 

If you did that, and also opted to follow the most knowledgeable experts and the insights on Attribution that they very generously share on their blogs, You would suddenly realize that this could all be so much FUN………Or maybe not.

BASIC ATTRIBUTION MODELLING

Anyway that depends on the kind of person you are, I guess.
For me the connection became obvious when I first noticed that the Last Click assumption that almost every digital marketer was pre-occupied with, could easily be likened to the Leading Goal-scorer in a football team, and how most people assume that he scores those goals by conjuring them all out of nothing. So just like in football, most people come to digital marketing with the Last Interaction model of Attribution already ingrained in their minds.
In case you are a bit confused with what I am talking about, I will give you a quick background of how it works.

Marketing Attribution in Google Analytics, comes with a few models that are given by default to help you appreciate which of your marketing channels are actually bringing you the most goal conversions in your campaign. Isn’t that awesome?! In digital marketing, there are a few given models, like Last-Click or Last Interaction model where 100% of the credit for the conversion is attributed to the last marketing activity that led to the conversion. Another example of a model is the Time Decay version, where credit is shared in a progressive way, where more of the credit is given to those marketing channels that the visitor encounters later on into his journey to conversion.

So with Attribution Modeling, I quickly found an expression for my unique kind of football analysis. The fact that my analyses are NOT ABSOLUTE in nature makes me feel very much at home with Attribution. The constant learning and testing of Marketing Attribution models in Google Analytics can greatly sharpen your ability to improve future marketing efforts; which makes me very glad that I have always rebelled against football commentators’ and general opinions, but have always learned to chart my own course in assigning credit in football teams’ victories or losses.
Let me demonstrate:
 

LAST CLICK - The Barcelona Example:

I am not a Barcelona fan.
In fact I actually hated the club immensely from the early 90s right up until Pep Guardiola took over and turned them into the second most glorious footballing spectacle that I ever saw in my life. The most glorious being the Real Madrid era from 1995 to 2002.
Yes. I am a Real Madrid supporter; but I guess that other Madridistas might refuse to believe that, on account of what I just said about their rivals, FC Barcelona. But in such an event, all I can say to them is “grow up, and enjoy football as a game!” Hehehe.

Anyway, now I am going to demonstrate how paying close attention to Sergio Busquets, Xavi, Dani Alvez, Pedro and Lionel Messi, has coincidentally helped to greatly improve my understanding of Attribution in Google Analytics.
Now If you’re a fan, you’ve probably noticed that I left out Iniesta from this Barcelona selection. Well that is because this article is NOT exactly about football, but more about Marketing Attribution. And I have actually observed that Iniesta’s contribution to the Barcelona team’s overall attacking potency is much more of a diversion to the opposition’s defensive formation. And that doesn’t adequately help me in analyzing website macro and micro conversions.
So for the sake of this model, let us assume that Messi, Busquets, Xavi, Alvez and Pedro are 5 variables of marketing channels in an Attribution model. They could represent, if you like, PPC, YouTube, Banner, Email, and let’s add some shiny new toy like TourDash.

At FC Barcelona, Leo Messi is the guy who scores the vast majority of their goals. But what really makes this individual special is that he is also the one who provides a reasonable majority of their goals (at least over the past 4 seasons). But what might yet surprise most of you, is that I have also carefully observed that this same Messi is often also involved with providing the assist to the ASSISTS…what I am now call the 3rd Ball To Goal.

Meanwhile, this doesn’t automatically mean that without Messi, Barca won’t score goals, because football is not that simplistic. What it does mean though, is that those who have everything to gain from the team’s overall success (the coach, the owner of the team, and the fans)are forced to reckon with Messi, and will not likely be willing to gamble on leaving him out of the team for important matches.
Now, in an extreme case, if Messi’s contribution is overemphasized, and his team mates’ are assumed to be redundant; such a situation could illustrate the Last Interaction Model in Marketing Attribution.

Many business & website owners are fond of taking the reports of their web analysts superficially, assuming that the Last Interaction of each customer is the sole reason for his/her purchase or goal completion. Thus they are assuming “Messi” does it all, without digging deeper to find out how much of a role the other players are playing to assist him. The problem is that these clients may therefore increase their focus on that particular advertising channel; and reduce, or completely freeze off any efforts on improving other channels. Yet such a scenario could be very harmful.
So thanks to FC Barcelona, I came up with a custom model of Attribution. Which is merely a more conservative and perhaps more practical variation of the Last Interaction model.

From the diagram labeled Figure 1 above, you can see how I have reduced the over dependence on the Last Interaction, by assuming that other marketing channels may have played a more important part in the decision process of the customer. It is important to note also that the labeling of each color bar with a designation of the 5 various channels

Once you’ve done your goal setting in Google Analytics (GA) and all of your online marketing campaigns (and even your traditional marketing campaigns like TV, billboard & magazine ads) are being properly tracked; the next thing is to begin to analyze and do some tests with the new assumptions that you discover from your attribution models.

LINEAR ATTRIBUTION- Falcao Left Atletico Madrid:

Now any true football fan today as heard of a Colombian footballer by the name of Radamel Falcao, but those of you pure digital marketing nerds may simply just take my word on anything I say, for the sake of the argument okay? Hehehe!

So the funny thing about Falcao is that he was such a great striker that only a few people noticed how awesome his supporting cast was. The likes of Arda Turan, Diego Costa, Adrian and Koke made Falcao’s job spearheading the attack much easier that it looked. 

But now that the Colombian striker has left the team, they seem to have become even stronger.

Attribution helps you to understand that the visitor of your site that converted (i.e. took an action that you have indicated in GA as a goal) may not actually be experiencing your website’s marketing tactics for the first time. It doesn’t always mean that because a customer came into your site and purchased a camera because you sent an e-mail the day before, that it is automatically the sole reason why he took that action.

There is need to discover if there were probably several assists leading to that email. The same customer could have at various points taken a mental note to visit your website after seeing several of your other marketing campaigns like your blog, your Pay Per Click advert on Facebook, and maybe even your banners on affiliate sites.

Now, the Liner Model of Attribution is designed to give equal amount of credit to each of the marketing channels of your campaigns. Digital marketers use this when they assume that every member of the “team” is of equal importance. Ofcourse, this may also be a poor assumption that could lead to wastage of marketing spending on some channels, but the idea is to experiment until you find what works best for your campaigns based on understanding how your customers interact with your channels.

WE ARE STILL AT THE BEGINNING HERE IN NIGERIA

I hope this was at least slightly enlightening to you, and you’ve gotten the idea that Google Analytics is a great tool that you might have been overlooking in your marketing efforts.

Starting early enough is what really matters. Then we must patiently continue growing in understanding, in know-how and in experience. I have shared a few other articles in digital marketing that you might like to look at.
If you would like to pick more of my brain on other digital marketing topics, you may reach me on my Google+ profile and add me to your circles. You may also join my Digital Marketing Community. 

Alternatively, you might wish to see how opinionated I am about Football/Soccer on my G+ Alternate Page, True Football Analyst. 

I am Rotimi Orims. 
I am passionate about Exploring the Web, about Learning, about Digital Marketing, about Football, about Movies and about Music. 
I know, those are a lot of passions!