Channel Hierarchy…
Setting up a multi-channel campaign can seem like a somewhat daunting task; but luckily with the help of Google Analytics – the stressful becomes exciting. Google even allows for you to break up your approach in different categories and sections, with the hierarchy as follows: channels, sources, and mediums. This helps especially when we begin to look at our information from the standpoint of campaign reporting; and actually analyzing our data to express the findings that we can use to help support our marketing goals and objectives. In order to actually begin creating our multi-channel campaign, we first need to select which ‘channels’ we are going to be using – keeping in mind our target audience as well as where we feel our messaging will reach the most people and deliver engaging content.
Selecting our Channels…
In my personal opinion, the best popular channels of today are – organic search, social, and email. Then when we start to break this down further we look at the ‘sources’ of these particular channels. In the case of organic search – Google, social – Instagram, email – Google gmail. Finally, it goes one step further down the hierarchy to ‘mediums’; Google – organic search (seo – unpaid), Instagram – organic or paid posts, Google gmail – newsletters or promos. It might sound a little bit confusing, but it follows the path of channels -> sources -> mediums. This allows for a data analyst to really get a sense of what is performing well and where it is performing well to a very specific level. Colin Differ from propellernet.com explains these terms with a bit more clarity than I can in this excerpt from his article, “Source is where your website’s traffic comes from (individual websites, Google, Facebook etc). Medium is how it got there (organic traffic, paid traffic, referral etc)” (Differ, 2020). I thought that including this excerpt would help to solidify and put into definition these terms in a better sense then what I could explain. What Differ states is very important when we begin to look out how we can now utilize these data insights to better support our marketing strategies.
Citation: Differ, C. (2020, July 24). What’s the difference between Source & Medium in Google Analytics? Propellernet. https://www.propellernet.co.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-source-medium-in-google-analytics/
