Crawl, Walk, Run: Advancing Analytics Maturity with Google Marketing Platform

by Michael Loban

In 2019, $130 billion was spent on digital advertising alone, as major retailers, consumer packaged goods companies (CPG), and media outlets embraced the ever-online customer. Despite these massive digital marketing budgets driving global ad campaigns, many marketers still lack the confidence to answer the age-old question: Is my campaign working?

Crawl, Walk, Run is your practical guide for navigating each stage of analytics maturity, taking you step-by-step through an analytics maturity framework to achieve greater efficiency and increased confidence in your marketing decisions. Alex Yastrebenetsky, Michael Loban, and contributors from the InfoTrust team (Amin Shawki, Andy Gibson, Ariel Opelt, Brad Prenger, Chris Vaughan, Kent Oldham, Lucas Long, Melanie Bowles, Pam Castricone, Tyler Blatt, and Stacey Shiring) discuss six focus areas in digital transformation, including how to choose the right platform, staff and upskill your team, and build effective processes. You'll also learn why Google Marketing Platform dominates the industry, how elements like Google Analytics 360 and Google Optimize 360 work together, and how data governance is implemented to properly follow new privacy guidelines (such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA).

Genres: Business

278 pages, Paperback

Published September 25, 2020

Reviews

[Robert Petkovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A web analytics book without a single line of code

Being a web analyst for more than a decade I’ve read some books on digital analytics and among the best were those that didn’t talk on how to set up this, how to capture that, where to put this code, etc. This is such a book and it can help any mid-level “hoping to be senior” analysts better understand their future job and obligations.
You see, being a senior web analyst doesn’t mean you’ll implement the code faster (well, actually it does, but not in large amounts). What it means that your value will mostly be in explaining all those figures, tables and charts to your clients in a way they not only trust you but also understand what they need to do in order to push those charts in desirable directions. Without that skill, you’re just another JavaScript master who can find the appropriate code faster.
This book explains how various organisations are at different level of analytical maturity and what it takes them to move to the next level. Data is the new oil, data is the new water and every organisation in the world will have to understand all those figures and charts better. Not only understand but be able to figure out how to use them to be better. In order to achieve that, they’ll need to hire analysts who are not good in getting reports done, not good in explaining what those figures and charts mean, but analysts who can suggest those organisations what do to, how to change copy, campaign, design, functionalities, and even internal and external teams in order to get better results. If you want to become such analyst, this is the book to read and study (this and Avinash’s “Web Analytics 2.0”). If you are a company owner who wants to lead a digital transformation (a very hot term in Covid-19 times), read this book and find out how “digital mature” your company is, how mature you want it to be (or is able to) and what to expect during that journey.
Excellent book, but weak with storytelling, which is to be expected if you’re having not just two authors but 13 of them. Perhaps some great editors could make it more useful to company owners and not just to web analysts. Also, I couldn’t help myself but to see the book as one giant native ad for the authors’ company - Info Trust. A great ad, but still an ad. Hence the 4 stars, but I will go back to this book often.

[Tommy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part sales pitch for their company, part instructional guide for digital analytics; the book seems to have different themes throughout and likely could have been 2-3 different books.

Section 2 will be a pretty heavy grind to read through unless you are the digital marketing person at your company and already using Google analytics suite. I wouldn’t recommend this section to anyone else.

Section 3 and 4 are easier reads for most business and analytics minded folks. In particular, the case studies are the most interesting.

Overall, the wide range of people contributing to this book and audiences targeted by it don’t come together cohesively.

[Karsten Jahn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is first and foremost an advertising brochure for the Google marketing platform. And as such it only explains why it’s great, but lacks any form of details about how to use it. It’s also way too meta in general concepts. For example, the clv calculation is not explained, but only that Google analytics can do it for you. And even that pretty vaguely.
Maybe I’m the wrong target group and the book was really for marketers that just want to hear about genetics. It’s certainly not suited for any hands on thinkers.

[W. Charles Slaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great ideas. It will stretch you understanding of how to leverage data analytics and digital transformations. I will re-read this book again.

This book is content rich. All marketing officers should read this book. The approach to maturity and the 6 Ps is forward thinking. Truly these concepts applied will create the next generation of industry leaders.

[Fiona Cheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite technical.