CXL Intermediate Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager For Beginners: My Review
Chris Mercer’s Google Analytics for Beginners was an intense and excellent primer to the platform.
And after a Christmas break, it was time to rejoin Chris for part two — CXL’s Intermediate Google Analytics.
Because GA is such a huge thing to get your head around, a lot of the beginner’s course was about setup and getting to know GA’s features.
This second section had a fair amount of that, too. But in a way aimed at getting the marketing insights you need more efficiently.
Talking of getting the information you need, let’s take a look at Mercer’s QIA framework for getting actionable insights from Analytics.
This framework was initially presented in GA For Beginners. But the tools and tricks in the Intermediate Course really boosted it’s power.
QIA — A Super Useful Framework for Working With Google Analytics
QIA stands for question, information, action.
Question — What do I want to know?
Information — What report or data point in GA will answer this question?
Action — What will I do if the result is A, B, or C?
The process of thinking and writing these down BEFORE you open Analytics is a great way to guard against mindless data browsing.
Or in other words, Mercer’s framework helps you avoid spending hours on GA without finding and acting on useful data. Something that is incredibly easy to fall into!
The Intermediate Analytics course pushes on from where Google Analytics For Beginner’s course left off.
It gives you pretty much all the standard features and techniques you could wish to use with Analytics. But Chris doesn’t just teach them for the sake of it. They are all taught with the aim of helping you use frameworks like QIA as effectively as possible.
I can’t really repeat this enough — If you want to get comfortable with GA, do not look any further than Mercer and CXL.
When I look back a few weeks, it’s crazy to think I didn’t know any of this stuff. And this is just another example of how CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree can take ‘one-channel’ marketers to the next level.
Speaking of taking things to the next level, it’s now time to review CXL’s Google Tag Manager for Beginners course. Also taught by the excellent Chris Mercer.
Google Tag Manager For Beginners Review
A key feature of the Mercer’s courses for Beginner and Intermediate Google Analytics was that GA isn’t a one-stop shop.
Mercer kept reminding us that while GA is great at storing data, Google has other tools that are more powerful when it comes to collecting and presenting that data.
In the next module of CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree, Mercer teaches us all about Google Tag Manager. An amazing tool for collecting data on user behaviour and firing that data to other platforms like Google Analytics.
The first video of the course was a high-level overview of what Tag Manager can do. And it was a real lightbulb moment for me.
How Growth Marketers Can Use Google Tag Manager To Get Better Results In Less Time
GA’s built in reports can tell you an awful lot. Especially when it comes to identifying where you have bottlenecks in your funnel.
But with Tag Manager, you can collect the data you need to zoom in a whole lot further. For example, you can see what particular features and behaviours on a page cause (or harm) conversions.
This means you have much more granular information to use as part of your QIA and experimentation frameworks. This lets you ask deeper questions…come up with better hypotheses…and run higher-potential experiments as a result.
We hadn’t even started the Tag Manager course properly yet. But I already knew it would be a serious addition to my growth marketing armoury.
Learning Tag Manager with Chris Mercer and CXL
As with Google Analytics, I was a complete beginner with Tag Manager. So having Mercer there to walk me through the basics was a god-send.
After the initial overview, I really liked how each ‘foundation’ of GTM was explained in bite-sized, 10 minute chunks.
Once again, Mercer didn’t rush past the vital basics. He just layered them on and made sure we were ready to get started with the new platform.
What follows is an incredible primer in setting up and using Tag Manager. Mercer takes you from being a complete novice to setting up tracking for everything from on-site behaviour to YouTube video views and e-commerce activity.
This is just another example of CXL being THE go-to place for world class training in every marketing tool that matters.
You don’t just get the ‘why’ on each channel. You get world-class practitioners telling you exactly HOW to set them up and use them like a pro.
Taking A Step Back: How CXL’s Growth Marketing Courses Can Transform Your Results
Inevitably, the start of a new year makes you reflect on the previous one.
So I think this is a good time to assess the impact CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree has had on my career so far.
I came into this program with two key aims:
- To build a solid foundation in channels other than email marketing
- To learn repeatable, methodical frameworks (rather than just having new skills)
I can safely say CXL’s courses have helped me make huge strides so far.
It’s easy to see this program as a collection of individual courses. But the sum of the parts is so much bigger.
Taken together, the courses have helped me set better marketing goals and put clear frameworks in place for achieving them.
As you can imagine, it’s delighted my colleagues and made us really excited for what 2021 has to bring. And on a personal level, it’s hard to describe how much better equipped and better organised I feel.
Even better, I’m little more than half-way through the course!
And next week I have Landing Page Optimization, Email Marketing, and Google Adwords to sink my teeth into.
As ever, I’m sure it’ll be an exciting and humbling experience!
This was my review of CXL’s Intermediate Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for Beginners Courses. Both courses are taught by the leading expert Chris Mercer and are available in CXL Institute’s Growth Marketing Minidegree.
