Analyzing your data for business relevance is crucial today. All major brands rely on data analytics for powerful insights. Google Analytics is the business favorite for this purpose. Data in HubSpot can be manipulated, marketed, and managed in quite interesting ways. You may want to use both these applications in sync with each other. This article highlights specific features of Google Analytics and HubSpot. It further reflects on various methods in which this integration can be made, potential drawbacks, and solutions for this process.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics has grown out to be everyone’s number one analytics tool. While a lot of attraction stays on the free rendition of the tool, it is fair to say that it has a good number of features for analytics insights.
Website traffic trends based on essential factors can be easily extracted and utilized for adjusting business strategies. The highlight here is to access interesting insights on marketing trends that accumulate.
You can access real-time reports on how your website interacts. Especially if you’re privy to using data with HubSpot, certain marketing analytics can be truly insightful. Google Analytics is widely used for analyzing dynamic data trends with prompt details, such as the count of active audiences, website traffic based on geographical locations, and other details that can be significant for effective marketing.
As shown below, a visual representation of trends, such as user visitations, locations, and top devices in use, help to find relevant channels to market through. Here, you can easily understand what if working well for your brand as well as fine-tune what is not working as an advantage.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a full-service platform that offers features for marketing, sales, customer service and other forms of data handling and management. Apart from being free of cost and void of the requirement of any technical setup or contract, HubSpot is a great software to cater to different marketing aspects for businesses.
In addition to this, there are tools for content management, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and website analytics. It also integrates with a variety of other platforms for improved functionality.
Typically, basic HubSpot features are available for free, but you can upgrade to other plans ranging from $50 to $180 per month for each user. It also allows a team of ten members to collaborate on one plan, which is great for business marketing management.
What is Closed-loop Reporting?
Closed-loop Reporting is a simple approach for marketers to attribute closed sales to their marketing channels, campaigns, and keywords. In a nutshell, it is a framework that makes data and information collected by marketing and sales experts available to both teams.
For example:
You might be driving 100 new leads from your website. But, what then? Do you know:
- How many of those leads close into a sale?
- Which channels and sources drove those leads?
- How much revenue do those leads generate?
- How long does it take for those leads to convert?
With closed-loop reporting, you can track your leads through their full customer journey. It allows you to accurately determine which channels drive the best leads, in terms of revenue.
Closed-loop reporting, at its heart, refers to “closing the loop” between the data collected by marketing (often in a marketing automation system) and the data collected by the sales team (typically in a CRM). This enables marketers to make decisions on actions that take place further down the funnel based on what generates the highest ROI for the business.
When to Set Up Closed-Loop Analytics?
Although Closed-Loop Analytics may be useful for any site, it is most useful for businesses with extended sales cycles, where purchases take place offline, and where the majority of leads acquired online do not normally result in sales. If you use a CRM like HubSpot, you can track the status of individual prospects and mark them for follow-up. Connecting HubSpot lead data to Google Analytics helps you to appropriately credit channels and campaigns for website leads that have the potential to become sales and even those that become final sales.
Closed-Loop Analytics also leads to more precise lifetime value metrics in analytics platforms like Google Analytics. This sort of data enables you to make data-driven decisions about how much it is worth investing in obtaining and maintaining a customer. For example, you could utilise Google Analytics to determine which whitepapers your MQLs downloaded from HubSpot and justify investing more resources in developing more of that sort of content.
Aside from what has previously been described, there is an amount of data that can be acquired. Closed Loop Analytics allows you to separate user data by lead status or field form, spot patterns among the most qualified marketing leads, and pinpoint the source that generates the most leads over time. All of this data may then be used to create Google Ads audiences and optimise for them, allowing you to fine-tune your marketing efforts.
Similarities Between Google Analytics and HubSpot
Even though the two reporting tools may seem like very different resources, they do have some similarities.
1) Page Views
Both Google Analytics and HubSpot provide the number of page views for your blog articles, website pages, landing pages, and all page types combined. They both allow you to see the average time spent on each page, the number of visitors, the exit rate, the bounce rate, and the number of CTA clicks and views.
2) Traffic Reporting
Both HubSpot and Google Analytics can help you provide traffic analytics that you can view.
3) Conversion Rates
Both Google Analytics and HubSpot inform you about which pages users convert on.
4) Goal Setting
Google Analytics and HubSpot both include the tools you need to build up numerous goal types.
5) Sources
HubSpot and Google Analytics both have a system that displays your traffic sources such as organic traffic, social media, and email marketing for your whole website.
Differences between Google Analytics and HubSpot
The differences between Google Analytics and HubSpot are as follows:
1) Page Views
Only Google Analytics displays your unique page views, but HubSpot does not.
2) Traffic Reporting
HubSpot allows you to track traffic year over year and month over month, and it also enables you to compare custom set dates. Google Analytics delves further into traffic reporting by allowing you to see which devices your visitors are using or by tracking new and returning users to your site.
3) Conversion Rates
Google Analytics allows you to take conversion tracking a step further by recording your visitors’ every interaction during a single session, but HubSpot does not.
4) Goal Setting
For sales teams, HubSpot allows you to set up quotas that are particular to each user. They also let you build up objectives in workflows, which Google Analytics does not.
5) Sources
Google Analytics goes a step further by displaying the medium, which is the category of each source. You may also view online referrals and cost-per-click paid search sources.
Reporting Limitations of HubSpot
If you really want to dig deep into your website analytics through HubSpot, you’ll face some limitations within the platform.
Some of the limitations of using HubSpot are as follows:
1) Difficult tracking the Interaction of Visitors
HubSpot can tell you where your site’s visitors are converting, but Google Analytics can tell you more about how they’re interacting with your site overall. You may get a summary of what attracts users to your site, what content they are most interested in, and when they depart.
2) Lack of in-depth insights on Visitor Behavior
While HubSpot demonstrates how individual users explore your website throughout a session, GA delves further into the intricacies of your visitors’ activity. One thing HubSpot does not show you is how your visitor behaviour varies across mobile and desktop visitors.
3) Tough to get a birds-eye view of your website
You can simply check how your individual web pages are performing using HubSpot, but it’s more difficult to assess your website performance on a larger scale.
4) No segmented traffic reports
Google Analytics, unlike HubSpot, allows you to build segmented traffic analytics. For example, you may create a custom segment that isolates LinkedIn traffic so you can learn more about this user group, such as what material they’re most interested in. You may even segment by user age if you have a certain age group in mind.
Reporting limitations of Google Analytics
While Google Analytics can give you an extremely detailed view of your site, it can have a higher barrier of entry compared to HubSpot. HubSpot is pretty user-friendly and quick to learn, but Google Analytics can feel a little intimidating.
Here are some other limitations you could face.
1) Difficult to see the Direct Impact on Pipeline & Revenue
Whereas HubSpot allows you to track leads and monitor the effectiveness of your conversion funnel, Google Analytics focuses on the overall picture of your website. The huge quantity of data available to you might be intimidating, making it difficult to evaluate how your website performance affects your pipeline and revenue.
2) Limited SEO Reports
Google Analytics offers SEO insights that include the search phrases visitors used to locate your site. HubSpot’s SEO and Content Strategy tools, on the other hand, assist you in better planning your SEO strategy and optimising your content. Within HubSpot, you can, for example, analyse the average search volume for certain keywords, on-page SEO recommendations, and the amount of inbound links.
3) No Reporting at the Contact Level
The ability to build marketing reports that help you assess your contacts is one of HubSpot’s primary advantages. You can generate reports for the following purposes:
- New connections made in a specified calendar period by date
- The average number of new contacts created in a given time period.
- Source-specific new contacts
- Contacts that were created recently
- Returning Contacts
Because Google Analytics is not a CRM, you cannot obtain these reports at the contact level.
4) Difficult to Visualize the Customer Journey
In comparison to Google Analytics, HubSpot enables you to better answer the critical question, “How do your website visitors become customers?”
While Google Analytics provides a more complete view of your website as a whole, it is difficult to track individual users and how they generate leads. HubSpot, on the other hand, assists you in better analysing the behaviours of your prospects or customers over time.
Why bring Google Analytics and HubSpot data together?
There are several stress points of significance for why using Google Analytics in tandem with HubSpot can be impactful. While HubSpot offers an array of features, specifically targeted at sales and effective marketing, Google Analytics can help provide valuable insights for the same data to fine-tune marketing strategies.
The reasons which indicate why to bring the data from Google Analytics and HubSpot together are as follows:
1) Complete Overview of your Marketing Performance
HubSpot and Google Analytics provide various types of web analytics. You can analyze your complete marketing and sales performance in one location by combining data from both systems. Divide and analyze your data more closely to understand what’s working well with your website and where you need to focus your efforts.
2) Analyze & Report on the entire customer journey Easily
By combining your HubSpot and Google Analytics data, you can evaluate and report on the whole customer experience from start to finish in a single platform. This allows you to “seal the deal” on marketing performance and ROI. You may, for example, monitor how many websites customers visit throughout their journey and what they did before clicking on your CTA.
3) Better Understand your Channel Performance
The more digital channels you employ, the more difficult it may be to obtain an accurate picture of your marketing performance. That is because your data is siloed.
However, by integrating data from HubSpot and Google Analytics, as well as other social media sites, you can have a better understanding of how your campaigns convert across channels. You may compare how various campaigns perform inside each channel, as well as how campaigns perform across multiple channels. These insights will inform you of the channels with the best ROI for your campaigns, allowing you to budget accordingly.
4) Create Customised Sales & Marketing reports
By merging data from HubSpot and Google Analytics, you can create personalized reports that tell better stories with your data. All of the data would be available at one go, and you could generate full-funnel reports and choose which data to present in a dashboard.
Methods to Integrate Google Analytics and HubSpot Data
Some integration methods require the basic knowledge of coding, while others tend to be code-free. You can use one of the following methods to integrate Google Analytics and HubSpot data:
Method 1: Using Standard Connectors
A popular use of readily available connectors has been seen for the integration of Google Analytics with various platforms. There are limitations regarding scaling up with this method. However, it can be one option for new businesses dealing with fewer data. A direct connection establishes by using various connectors for integration with HubSpot. HubSpot has also launched a Connect Program, which helps to connect with different platforms with mutual customers. Using such connectors for integration or perhaps Google Data Studio and Analytics 360 connectors can be a quick way of establishing an integration. However, this method might need to upgrade if more complex data points are involved or your business is scaling up.
Method 2: Using Manual Integration
For those with some credible coding knowledge, manual integration can be another option. Different APIs can be installed and run to channel integration of Google Analytics and HubSpot. You can select one as per your data requirements. This method is not suitable for instances where data is updated and altered constantly. The segregation of factors also becomes difficult in such a non-automated environment. For frequent use, this might not be favorable. It is where the need for quick automation arises.
Method 3: Using Hevo Data
To overcome the challenges of upscaling, redundancy, and lack of automation, Hevo Data can be a tool for efficient integration. Hevo Data is a No-code Data Pipeline. Hevo can create integration between Google Analytics and HubSpot easily and quickly. It helps transfer data from HubSpot to a destination of your choice for free. It is a fully automated platform, that takes into account the real-time requirements of your data and other complex factors.
Following a simple setup procedure, no manual monitoring is required for updating and managing the data. Hevo is a fully managed platform with additional features for data transfer, analytics, replication, and efficient management. If you’re in a business dealing with dynamic data points and looking for a sophisticated strategy for platform integration, place your bets on Hevo!
Tips for Data Consistency between Google and Hubspot
- Use UTM Tracking Parameters: It can’t be emphasized enough the importance of using consistent UTM naming standards for all links you establish that bring visitors back to your web pages. This will ensure that data is consistently grouped across Google and Hubspot, ensuring that Google Analytics Channel reporting and Hubspot Source reporting are more closely aligned. UTM tracking settings are very crucial for email marketing, social media marketing, and display advertising.
- Set up a Paid Social Channel in Google Analytics: Hubspot already has a Paid Social “Source,” and in Google Analytics, you can establish a custom channel grouping for Paid Social to track your social advertising efforts apart from organic social efforts. This will assist guarantee that your Google Analytics Channel report and your Hubspot Sources report are more closely aligned.
- Use UTM Parameters for Non-Paid Search Advertising: Hubspot lacks a ‘Display‘ source to aggregate traffic from paid sources other than “Paid search.” It is recommended that you choose Medium = Display, which will aggregate the traffic into Hubspot under ‘Other Campaigns.’
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.
Boost your marketing efficiency by integrating HubSpot with Google Ads. Learn the two easy steps to streamline your ad campaigns.
Conclusion
It is clear that there are multi-fold benefits of using HubSpot in tandem with Google Analytics and this article explores ways to carry out that integration. You can choose what suits you best by keeping in mind the nature of your data. To get ease with working on different Google Analytics Dashboards, you can check out this Google Analytics Dashboard guide.
Share your experience of integrating Google Analytics and HubSpot in the comment section below.
Aman Deep Sharma is a data enthusiast with a flair for writing. He holds a B.Tech degree in Information Technology, and his expertise lies in making data analysis approachable and valuable for everyone, from beginners to seasoned professionals. Aman finds joy in breaking down complex topics related to data engineering and integration to help data practitioners solve their day-to-day problems.
