Week 7: Digital Analytics & Data-Driven Decisions

In digital marketing, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This week focuses on Analytics & Conversion Rate Optimization. We will look at how to read data, find the story it’s telling, and make business decisions based on evidence rather than gut feeling.

View lecture slides: Week 7 Slides

1. Pre-Work: The Fundamentals of Measurement

Before you open a dashboard, you need to understand what you are tracking.

Event Tracking vs. Pageviews

Historically, analytics focused on “Pageviews” (how many times a page loaded). Modern analytics, like Google Analytics 4 (GA4), focuses on Events—specific actions users take on your site, such as clicking a “Submit” button, playing a video, or scrolling halfway down a page.

As a manager, you must define which events are Conversions (key business outcomes).

  • Micro-conversions: Newsletter signup, video view, adding to cart.
  • Macro-conversions: Completing a purchase, submitting a qualified lead form. Without properly configured conversion events, your paid ads algorithms (from Weeks 4 and 5) will have no data to optimize against.

Analytics cycle model for turning data into decisions

Attribution Models

When a user buys something, which marketing channel gets the credit?

  • Last-Click: 100% credit goes to the last channel they interacted with before buying. (Simple, but flawed).
  • First-Click: 100% credit goes to the channel that first introduced them to your brand.
  • Data-Driven (Multi-Touch): Algorithms distribute credit across all the channels the user interacted with during their journey.
flowchart LR
    A[Facebook Ad] --> B[Organic Search] --> C[Email Link] --> D((Purchase))
    style D fill:#d63031,color:#fff

If a user follows the path above, Last-Click attribution gives 100% of the credit to Email. Is that fair? Attribution models help answer this.

2. Lab Session: The Analytics Sandbox

Today, we dive into the data. Since your individual sandbox websites won’t have enough traffic yet, we will use a pre-prepared GA4 Demo Account that contains meaningful traffic and conversion data.

Navigating GA4 & Meta Insights

We will do a live walkthrough of the interfaces:

  • Where to find Traffic Acquisition (Where did they come from?)
  • Where to find Engagement (What did they do?)
  • Where to find Monetization/Conversions (Did they buy/submit a lead?)

Finding the Leak (The Manager’s Core Skill)

Using the demo dataset, your task is to act as a marketing analyst. Managers shouldn’t drown in data; they should look for exceptions, drop-offs, and leaks.

  1. Identify the Drop-off: Look at the funnel. Where are users abandoning the journey? (e.g., “70% of users leave on the checkout page”).
  2. Segment the Behavior: Averages lie. Is the drop-off worse on Mobile vs. Desktop? Is it worse for traffic coming from Social Media vs. Search?
  3. Formulate Recommendations: Based on your findings, what should the business do? (e.g., “Simplify the mobile checkout form”). Data without an action plan is just trivia.

AI for analysis (manager rule)

AI can summarize dashboards, but you must cite the metric and screenshot in your memo. Never invent a leak you cannot point to in GA4. Prefer one sharp finding over a long AI-generated report.

Real-world proof (measurement → action)

Use these as models for “leak → fix → metric”:

  • Bookstore CRO: abandon −22% after checkout simplification — brief
  • Home services Ads: site/CVR 3.1% → 5.8% alongside account cleanup — brief
  • Education PPC: landing CVR 2.1% → 6.8% with dedicated LPs — brief

Your memo should sound like these: one leak, evidence, three actions, expected lift.

Analytics reporting visual for insight presentation and decision-making

Try it: LTV:CAC ratio

Healthy target from Week 1: LTV ≥ 3× CAC. Work in NPR.

Self-check: GA4 pitfalls

Which practice most often produces misleading channel decisions?

3. Deliverable

Use the MBA DM Deliverable Toolkit (Templates + Samples) before submitting.

A one-page insight memo. Act as if you are presenting to your CEO.

  • Include 1-2 screenshots from the GA4 demo account proving your finding.
  • State clearly where the biggest drop-off/problem in the funnel is.
  • Provide three specific, actionable optimization recommendations to fix it.

Submit the memo before the start of Week 8.