The following is a guest post contributed by Josh Braaten, Senior Online Marketing Manager at Rasmussen College, Google Analytics enthusiast, and avid content scientist.

Conversion is rarely straightforward, especially for products or services with lengthy or complicated buying cycles. Working for a college has made it clear to me that every consumer is different, and so are their research needs as they navigate their unique buying process. 

It takes a holistic content strategy to address the extensive information needs of potential students, and rarely do blogs and other types of content marketing get the credit they deserve for the role they play in influencing conversion.

Luckily, Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels provides marketers with amazing new ways to see how users interact with web content on their path to conversion and to prove the value of content marketing.

Introducing Google Analytics Multi-Content Funnels

Consumers begin any major investment in the awareness/discovery phase, are triggered into a search/consideration phase, and finally end up at their buy/close phase when they take the conversion action. Imagine how your content strategy could perform if you understood how consumers interact with your website content as they navigate their investment decision. 

That’s where the idea of Multi-Content Funnels started. To be clear, Multi-Content Funnels is not a new Google Analytics feature, but rather a specific application of the existing Multi-Channel Funnels reporting features that illustrates the direct and indirect effects of your website content instead of your marketing channels.

Multi-Channel Funnels launched a little over a year ago as a way to help show how users interact with your marketing efforts over multiple visits. By default, these reports are configured to report the relationships between marketing channels (e.g., paid search, social media, email), but we’re going to modify them to demonstrate the value of content marketing.

The key to this type of analysis is being able to use the Landing Page URL data attribute when you create Channel Groupings and Conversion Segments within a Multi-Channel Funnel report. When I first wrote on their inbound marketing benefits, Multi-Channel Funnels didn’t support this deep dive into your website content because they didn’t include landing page in the source data.

Turns out the Google Analytics team had it on the road map and added it to Multi-Channel Funnel reports within the last few months. Content marketers, get ready to geek out with these content-based applications of the Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnel reports.

Building Content-Based Channel Groupings

The first major application of Multi-Channel Funnels for content marketing is to create Channel Groupings based on your content, which will demonstrate the most common content paths users take to conversion over the course of multiple visits.

Start off by creating a new Channel Grouping within the Top Conversion Paths report. You’ll want to group the major content sections of your website together into channels.

For example, here I’ve created this Channel Grouping that corresponds to the Degrees Catalog section of our website that includes any landing page URL containing “/degrees.”

Creating a Channel Grouping in Multi-Channel Funnels:

I also included channels that correspond to each of the major content sections of the website as I built out this content-based Channel Grouping. This is what the content-based Channel Groupings of a college website looked like when I was done with them:

Content-Based Channel Grouping:

Your own content-based Channel Groupings will likely be different for every website, but each should include major product directories or service listings, blogs, sections that answer specific questions or solve specific problems, whitepapers, ebooks, etc.

Top Content Conversion Paths

Once the content-based Channel Groupings are set up, we’re able to access the Top Conversion Paths report, which instantly becomes the content marketer’s best friend because it shows how many visits it takes before visitors convert, and how they start their website experiences for each visit.

You can use the Channel Groupings that correspond to specific content sections as with the screenshot above, or you can apply even broader Channel Groupings to provide a high-level view of the most common content paths towards conversion by marketing intent, consumer action, or both. 

Channel Groupings Based on Buying Cycle Path

Creating Channel Groupings based on marketing intent and the consumer buying cycle requires a deep understanding of how consumer interact with your website. These Channel Groupings can be created by combining multiple sections of the website when constructing each Channel Grouping, depending on which phase of the buying process they facilitate:

Pairing this information with traffic and conversion data makes it clear where to focus resources for new types of content, content edits, and expansion of existing website content, as well as demonstrates which parts of our content marketing strategy are driving results.

(Fascinating side note: Looking beyond the most popular conversion paths, some degree seekers’ research processes can see them returning to the website 50 times or more before they are confident in their conversion decision. As a student of web analytics, the next question is whether this conversion path is long because it should be, or is it fraught with unnecessary abandonment that can be overcome with improvements to the content?)

A Long Conversion Path:

Determining the Value of Specific Content with Conversion Segments

Channel Groupings are half the fun because they can only help to organize and present data. To determine the value of specific types of content, we need to create custom Conversion Segments to pair with Channel Groupings. 

Content-Based Conversion Segments in Multi-Channel Funnels:

Custom Conversion Segments are easy to create and work just like any other segments in Google Analytics, however, these also include the ability to segment-based interaction: First interaction, last interaction, any interaction, and assisting interaction.

Custom Conversion Segment Setup:

This segment captures conversions where the last visit on the conversion path landed on the blog. Most of Google Analytics conversion reports are based on the last interaction, but this segment allows you to explicitly specify between first interaction, last interaction, any interaction, and assisting interactions.

As a content marketer, discovering some blogs assist 150 percent more conversions than they produce directly was a powerful revelation, one that was made possible by content-based Channel Groupings and Conversion Segments applied to Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels.

The Many Uses of Multi-Channel Funnels for Inbound Marketing

Understanding how consumers interact with your website content is the first step in providing them with the best experience possible – the primary goal of every modern SEO and content marketer. Those who understand and execute content strategy with this knowledge in mind continue to drive highly efficient campaigns.

The Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels with content-based segments and groupings, or Multi-Content Funnels as I like to call them, provides you with several new ways to leverage these amazing reports, boost your content marketing efforts, and better serve your current and potential consumers.

How have you used Multi-Channel Funnels in your content strategy?

(Note: Some screenshots were edited to remove site details.)

Browsing through my Google+ account I ran across an interesting post on Instagram. It details how one restaurant in New York City came up with a creative way to utilize this popular photography app into a marketing tool for their business.

The video showcases restaurant goers sharing photos of menu items via Instagram while using the restaurant’s hashtag #insta_realestate. Agents all over the world are using that hashtag to highlight amazing photos and listings on Instagram.

2. Use hashtags and feature your favorite parts about where you live.
How about using the hashtag #NYCeats if you are an agent in NYC! Then, you can run a search for that hashtag and use that search as a source of content for your website, blog or social channels.

3. Give your audience a behind the scenes peek into your life.
Capture the funny and offbeat. The flyer box that is empty – again. The hundredth time you went to Starbucks this week. Meeting with the title company to make sure all the paperwork is in order for today’s closing. People love a sneak peak, plus it gives your clients insight on how much you do for them!

Are you utilizing Instagram? If so, how? I’d love to hear from you – leave me a comment below!

After falling to a 15-year low in the first quarter of the year, then rising by one tenth of a percent in the second quarter, the nation’s homeownership rate didn’t change at all in the third, suggesting that the rate’s seven year slide may be ending as home sales pick up and the recovery sets in.

The number of households owning homes reached 75,076,000 in the third quarter, increasing from 74,832,000 in the second, but down from 75,251,000 a year ago, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

However, the homeownership rate is still near historic lows. The rate in the first quarter of 2012 was 65.4 percent, the lowest since the first quarter of 1997, when the rate was also 65.4 percent. The homeownership rate peaked at 69.2 percent in the second quarter of 2004.

While the homeownership rate may have hit bottom, it may not rise very quickly in the near future if there are no houses for potential homeowners to buy. Tight inventories have plagued sales and Census confirmed that the number of housing units for sale in the third quarter was 1,476,000, down from 1,595,000 in the second quarter and 1,862,000 in third-quarter 2011-a 20 percent decline in one year. The number of housing units held off the market was 7,190,000, down from 7,612,000 in second quarter but up from 7,190,000 a year ago.

The homeownership rate for older Americans-defined as 65 and over-fell in the third quarter to 81.4 percent from 81.6 percent in the second. The homeownership rate for Americans younger than 35 fell to 36.3 percent. The 45-64 age bracket was the only group to see an increase in homeownership; the rate for that group increased 0.6 percentage points to 72 percent.

Homeownership among non-Hispanic whites rose slightly from 73.5 to 73.6 percent in the third quarter. Among blacks, homeownership rose even more, from 43.8 to 44.1 percent but was significantly lower than a year ago when the rate was 45.6 percent and was the lowest of all racial groups. Hispanics rose from 46.5 to 46.7 percent but was also lower than the third quarter of 2011, when 47.6 percent. The rate for all other races fell, from 55.0 percent in the second quarter to 54.5 percent in the third.

Homeownership fell slightly among wealthier Americans. The homeownership rate for households with family incomes greater than or equal to the median family income fell from 80.5 percent in the second quarter to 80.3 percent in the third and was lower than the third quarter 2011 rate (81.3 percent). The rate for those households with family incomes less than the median family income was also lower than the third quarter 2011 rate (51.3 percent)

The highest homeownership rate in the third quarter was in the Midwest-69.6 percent, unchanged from the second quarter. Homeownership also increased in the West (to 60.1 percent) and the Northeast (to 63.9 percent), making the South the only region to experience a decline (to 66.9 percent). The homeownership rate measures the proportion of households owning their primary residence, computed by dividing the number of households that are occupied by owners by the total number of occupied homes.

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Completed foreclosures plunged 68 percent in September from a year ago yet the national foreclosure inventory hardly budged in 12 months, according to the latest CoreLogic report.

There were 57,000 completed foreclosures last month, down from 83,000 in September 2011 and 59,000 in August. Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 3.9 million completed foreclosures across the country.

Slower processing contributed to a continued high level of foreclosure inventory. Some 1.4 million homes, or 3.3 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure inventory as of September compared to 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent, in September 2011. Month-over-month, the national foreclosure inventory was down 1.1 percent from August to September. The foreclosure inventory is the share of all mortgaged homes in any stage of the foreclosure process.

“The continuing downward trend in foreclosures along with a gradual clearing of the shadow inventory are signs of stabilization and improvement in the housing market,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “Increasingly improving market conditions and industry and government policy are allowing distressed homeowners to pursue refinancing, loan modifications or short sales rather than foreclosures.”

“Homes lost to foreclosure in September 2012 are down 50 percent since the peak month in September 2010 and 22 percent less than the beginning of the year,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “While there is significant progress to be made before returning to pre-crisis levels, the trend is in the right direction as short sales, up 27 percent year over year in August, continue to gain popularity.”

Highlights:

• The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in September 2012 were: California (108,000), Florida (92,000), Texas (59,000), Georgia (55,000) and Michigan (51,000). These five states account for 47.7 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally.
• The five states with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in September 2012 were: South Dakota (20), District of Columbia (58), Hawaii (436), North Dakota (583) and Maine (625).
• The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Florida (11.5 percent), New Jersey (7.3 percent), New York (5.3 percent), Illinois (5.2 percent) and Nevada (4.9 percent).
• The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: Wyoming (0.5 percent), Alaska (0.7 percent), North Dakota (0.7 percent), Nebraska (0.9 percent) and South Dakota (1.1 percent).

*August data was revised. Revisions are standard, and to ensure accuracy CoreLogic incorporates newly released data to provide updated results.

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