by Ben Castelli / Expertise, research, google analytics, Hubspot, Analytics, SEO-SEM / Feb 15, 2018 / 3 MIN READ
Updated February 14th, 2018
Google Analytics is the most popular website analytics tool. Hubspot is one of the most popular marketing automation platforms that also offers website analytics. We often get the question “Should I use Google Analytics or Hubspot Analytics for tracking and measurement”. The answer is Yes. We recommend using both and choosing which platform based on the questions you are trying to answer. This requires installing both the Google Analytics tracking code and Hubspot tracking code across all of your web pages, regardless of where they are hosted.
This post will dive into the value of using both platforms and addressing the #1 issue of source attribution and having consistent metrics across the two platforms.
Google Analytics is the industry standard for measuring website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. It’s effective and free! While Google Analytics is more complex to use compared to Hubspot, it provides much greater detail, particularly when you apply segments. Fortunately, its widespread adoption means there are well-documented guides for nearly everything the platform has to offer.
Use Google Analytics to answer questions like:
Additionally, Google Analytics is our first stop for looking at metrics like visits (sessions), page performance, conversion rate and ecommerce data.
Hubspot Analytics Tools continue to evolve and improve. The reports are easy to read and the interface is easy-to-use for a variety of users across an organization. Hubspot is a good resource for checking high-level metrics. And it's great at closing the loop between marketing and sales with metrics specific to new contacts (Hubspot’s term for leads) and customers.
Use Hubspot Analytics to answer questions like:
Additionally, Hubspot tracks the activity of all users (both known and unknown), creating the ability to score contacts and segment for targeted marketing efforts.
The biggest frustration we see when using both Google Analytics and Hubspot is that the common web traffic metrics between the two platforms often do not line up. Sessions may differ slightly between the two platforms, and that is OK. It is important to understand and accept a level of variance, keep an eye on the variance to make sure it does grow and then choose one platform for consistent reporting.
One of the biggest issues is terminology and how web traffic is categorized into buckets. This is problematic because traffic may be grouped into a source that you might not expect, making it difficult to evaluate your investment into specific marketing efforts. Below is a summary of how each platform treats the categorization of where website traffic comes from:
Here is the Google Analytics Channels report:
Here is the Google Analytics Source / Medium Report:
Here is the Hubspot Sources Report:
Turning data into something valuable in the marketing process is all about asking the right questions and applying focus. Combining Google Analytics and Hubspot Analytics will deliver data to help fuel conversations, ask the right questions and dig deeper to uncover insights.
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