New digital marketing capabilities are emerging every day. Marketers can now use a wide range of social media platforms, email marketing tools, digital advertising, and mobile advertising, not to mention a vast range of content options, to reach their target audiences. But the flip side of all these new ways to reach new people, engage them and convert them into leads and customers is measurement. How can you be sure your efforts are doing what they were designed to do?
Thankfully, there are also many analytics tools available, with more being introduced, updated and improved seemingly every day. Two key players in the world of web analytics are HubSpot and Google Analytics. In this post, I’ll take a look at each of these analytics options and compare their features and functionalities to you to decide which is best for your website and your business goals.
Google Analytics
Google is, of course, a massive company providing a wide range of products for consumers and businesses, alike. But one of its products, in particular, delivers exceptional value for digital marketers: Google Analytics.
Celebrating its 10-year anniversary this month, Google Analytics was launched in November, 2005 (Google Company, 2015). It offers more than 80 reports to measure and help you analyze your site's performance (Reed College of Media, 2015). Focusing on how visitors are accessing your site and what they’re doing there, along with some limited demographic information about them.
The metrics tracked and reported by Google Analytics are split into four main categories: Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions. There are also a few additional features, such as Real Time reporting, which provides a snapshot of what is happening on the website as you watch the analytics. It enables you to watch what’s happening on your site in - you guessed it - real time. Intelligence Events is another extra reporting feature, which provide automatic and custom alerts triggered by predetermined events or occurrences on the website (Google Analytics Help, 2015).
HubSpot
Launched in 2006, HubSpot introduced the world to the idea of inbound marketing. The approach moved marketers from pushing content and advertising out to their target audiences to, instead, pulling targets in toward them by publishing content that their targets would find valuable in places where they would easily access it, thus drawing them into their sites to convert and be nurtured as leads.
Like Google, HubSpot’s platform goes far beyond analytics. The web-based platform allows marketers to build websites; launch campaigns with batch and automated emails, landing pages and forms. Also with HubSpot, users can manage contacts from both Marketing and Sales perspectives with two separate, but connected platforms, including a CRM that rivals Salesforce. And, of course, HubSpot’s analytics tools are pretty spectacular, too.
Costs
Before diving into the comparison of the features and functionalities of Google Analytics and HubSpot, one major difference should be noted. Google Analytics is free (although there are premium options available for a fee) and HubSpot comes at a price - a steep one.
HubSpot Pricing:
Image: HubSpot
HubSpot’s pricing is based on the number of contacts you have in your database. Pricing starts at $100/month for 100 contacts. A company with 15,000 contacts would pay $2,450 per month - after a $5,000 onboarding fee (HubSpot Pricing, 2015). Of course, this includes far more than analytics tools, but it’s safe to say that it’s a strategic business decision to adopt HubSpot, while Google Analytics can really be implemented and used on a whim - no strategic meetings or purchase orders required.
That said, here’s a closer look at some of the metrics and reporting features offered by Google Analytics and HubSpot.
Who
Google:
With Google’s Audience reporting, understand who is visiting your website and when. Use these reports to learn more about the individuals that are coming to your site, as well as how they are accessing it and engaging with it. Here, if you enable the collection of user demographics and interests data, you can harness the power of Google’s cookie tracking to get a better understanding of your visitors’ demographics, interests and preferences (Google Analytics Help: Audience Reports, 2015).
Also in the Audience section, you’ll find information about where your visitors are located geographically and the language they speak. You can see their behavior patterns on your site, the technology and devices they’re using to view your site, and view your users’ flow for how they typically enter, browse and exit your site.
HubSpot:
This is really where HubSpot shines. It’s hard to compete with the level of information it provides about site visitors. The magic behind HubSpot is in the contact database included within the platform. Individuals can join the database by converting through a form submission on your website or by being imported from a list. Regardless, every contact in the database must at least have an email address, as this is the unique indicator to protect the database from duplicate records (HubSpot, 2015).
Once a contact is entered into the database, HubSpot does two incredible things. First, it tracks any and all activity or engagement with your company’s online presence, including your website and your social media accounts. Second, it scours the Internet for more information about that contact, including company information, Twitter handle, gravitar and more (HubSpot Products, 2015).
If a contact is NOT in the HubSpot database and visits your website, their activity and engagement is tracked just like they are by Google Analytics. While both analytics options collect similar data about site visits and user behavior, it’s clear that HubSpot delivers a level of data that is unmatched by Google Analytics. But, as mentioned earlier, while Google Analytics is free, HubSpot comes at a hefty price.
How
Both Google Analytics and HubSpot help answer the questions, “How are different online and offline sources driving traffic to my site?” and “Which traffic sources are generating the most traffic?” (Reed College of Media, 2015).
Google:
The Acquisition section of Google Analytics allows for visibility of the channels, sites, social media platforms and search engines that are driving traffic to your site. This is also where you can see traffic generated from Google AdWords campaigns, SEO efforts and any other defined campaigns you may have going (Google Analytics Help: Acquisition Reports, 2015).
Google’s Acquisition section is also where you are able to see what keywords individuals are using in their searches when they find your site. There are limitations to this information, though. In October 2011, Google changed the way it collects and shares this data from its users to protect their privacy.
If a user is logged into a Google product, such as a Google Account, their searches are conducted over SSL (secure sockets layer) and the data relating to that search, including keywords, is hidden. While Google can still see this information, website owners cannot (Broadley, 2013).
HubSpot:
HubSpot’s reporting section includes a Sources Report, which clearly shows what visitors are coming to the website from organic search, referrals, social media, email marketing, paid search or directly by entering the URL into the browser (HubSpot Products, 2015).
HubSpot's Sources Report
Image: HubSpot
HubSpot also has a Keywords tool that allows its users to enter in keywords they wish to rank for, tie them to campaigns if they wish and then see how effective those keywords are in generating traffic to the site. Additionally, HubSpot provides insights about which competitors are ranking for those keywords, as well as advice on how to improve your own rankings for each word or phrase (HubSpot 2015).
What
What are people doing once they arrive at your website? Where are they entering the site - or, in other words, what pages are they “landing” on? What pages are they viewing? How are they navigating through the site? What pages are they viewing most often as they exit your site?
Google:
All of these questions and more can be answered with the reports available in the Behavior section of Google Analytics. This section is where you can see which of your pages are generating the most traffic, what information visitors seem to be gravitating to and what they’re searching for on your site.
Google Analytics Behavior Overview
Also in this section, you can get an idea for the speed of your site, or how fast (or slow) your pages may be loading. This is important, as it can impact your users’ experience, as well as your search rankings (Google Analytics Help: Behavior Reporting, 2015).
HubSpot:
While Google’s reporting is, in my opinion, clearer and easier to navigate, Hubspot does also answer these important questions about visitor behavior. In HubSpot’s newly updated Website and Blog sections, users can see which pages are generating the most traffic and what pages visitors are using to enter into the site.
HubSpot has a feature called “Events” where users can set up actions or behaviors to be tracked on the site (HubSpot Products, 2015). This is really helpful and interesting data, however, you have to know what you’re looking for before you can begin collecting and analyzing the information. In contrast, Google also allows for similar events as defined by the user, but also just automatically provides more information in this area.
HubSpot doesn’t provide nearly as much information about the paths users take as they navigate through the site, how long they stay or what pages they use to exit. This is important information, of course, but it is best collected and reported by Google Analytics.
Conversions
Conversions are critically important metrics for any marketer to measure. They help reveal what efforts are working - not just to generate visits and pageviews, but to increase valuable actions taken site visitors. These include form submissions, email subscriptions, downloads and more.
Google Analytics:
Data about conversions are available through Google Analytics, however, they require a bit of work to set up because Google Analytics needs to know what your goals are before it can begin to tell you which visitors are reaching them. It’s worth the effort, though, as once this section is set up, the insights you can get in return are pretty rewarding.
Reports available in the Conversions section of Google Analytics include goals, events, conversions or actions on your site in a given timeframe. All of these reports require some information about what you hope to track, but once you set it up, Google Analytics will help you see the conversion progress you’re making toward reaching your goals (Google Analytics Help: Conversion Reports, 2015).
Here, if your site has eCommerce, you can see how it’s performing on your site as far as traffic, conversions and attribution, which is obviously quite important if you have an online store (Google Analytics Help: Conversion Reports, 2015).
HubSpot:
This is another area where HubSpot really delivers extreme value. Because it is a full-fledged inbound marketing platform, you use it to actually create the conversion opportunities, such as forms, CTAs (calls-to-action), landing pages and thank you pages, and workflows. For this reason, HubSpot already knows about each conversion opportunity you’ve created so it tracks and reports data about each one - automatically (HubSpot Products, 2015).
For even greater clarity, users can group together elements of a campaign using the Campaigns tool and see how the entire campaign is performing. This includes traffic to landing pages and site pages related to the campaign, related blog posts, social media activity, CTAs, keywords, workflows, emails and more.
Which Wins?
In summary, it’s hard to beat HubSpot when it comes to full-funnel analytics. HubSpot delivers the ability to track marketing efforts at every stage of the process: click by click. It even provides an exceptional amount of information about site visitors and provides a database and CRM to improve alignment between Sales and Marketing.
In contrast, HubSpot is expensive. In fact, many businesses simply can’t afford it. Thankfully, Google Analytics is also an exceptional tool that marketers can use for free. It provides an exceptional level of information about site visitors, their on-site behavior and the performance of your website. It’s a quality platform that keeps getting better. And you can’t beat the price tag!
So if you can afford it, I highly recommend HubSpot. And actually, I think you should use both HubSpot AND Google Analytics. But if you just don’t have the budget, dive into Google Analytics and max out its functionalities to get the most out of your website.
Resources
Baum, D. (August 8, 2012). “The King of Marketing Analytics: Google or HubSpot?”. IMPACT Blog. Retrieved from http://www.impactbnd.com/blog/the-king-of-marketing-analytics-google-or-hubspot
Broadley, C. (February 5, 2013). “How to Unlock Your ‘Not Provided’ Keywords in Google Analytics”. KISSMetrics. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/unlock-keyword-not-provided/
Google Analytics Help (2015). “Audience Reports”. Google Analytics Help Center. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/1007027?hl=en&ref_topic=3544907
Google Analytics Help (2015). “Acquisition Reports”. Google Analytics Help Center. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/3125765?hl=en&ref_topic=3544907
Google Analytics Help (2015). “Behavior Reports”. Google Analytics Help Center. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/1120718?hl=en&ref_topic=3544907
Google Analytics Help (2015). “Conversion Reports”. Google Analytics Help Center. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/1631741?hl=en&ref_topic=3544907
Google Company. (2015). "Our history in depth". Google. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/about/company/history/
HubSpot. (2015). “Our Story”. HubSpot. Retrieved from http://www.hubspot.com/internet-marketing-company
HubSpot Pricing. (2015). “HubSpot Pricing”. HubSpot. Retrieved from http://www.hubspot.com/pricing/marketing
HubSpot Products. (2015) “HubSpot Product Analytics”. HubSpot. Retrieved from http://www.hubspot.com/products/analytics
Reed College of Media. (2015) “Week 5 Lesson: Google Analytics”. West Virginia University. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_51583_1&content_id=_2558935_1&framesetWrapped=true
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