INBOX INSIGHTS, February 20, 2024: The Problem with Jargon pt. 2, GA4 Diagnostics pt. 3 - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: The Problem with Jargon pt. 2, GA4 Diagnostics pt. 3 (2/21) :: View in browser

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The Problem with Using Jargon – Part 2

Last week, I outlined why being too heavily reliant on jargon can be problematic.

To recap:

You can alienate your audience
You create barriers to understanding
You are reducing engagement
You are negatively affecting brand trust

You can read the whole post here

So, how do we fix this problem?

For jargon users:

If you’re guilty of using too much jargon, use this as a research opportunity. Talk to your people. This is your internal team and your external audience. Ask them where their comfort level is with specific language. Your job is to meet people where they are before expecting more.

If the language you’re using isn’t resonating, create content to educate. Develop helpful content that will help people of all levels understand the concepts. Give them context into the terms, when to use them, and examples.

This is also an opportunity for you to expand your vocabulary. If you’re reliant on jargon to communicate, take a step back. Challenge yourself to write a post that doesn’t use any jargon. Can you do it? It’s a good exercise to help you hone your communication skills.

This will be an exercise in restraint and patience. What we find to be easy and simple, others may find to be challenging. Don’t make assumptions about how quickly your audience is catching on. Make sure your content is continuously updated and accessible.

Lastly, check in frequently. As technology evolves, so does the language used to describe it. Make sure that as you’re staying up to date, you’re keeping those around you updated as well. Be sure to check in with your audience to ensure that the content you’re creating is helpful and not adding to the confusion.

If you’re on the receiving end of jargon:

If the terminology you come across isn’t familiar to you, this is your opportunity. It is not a reflection of your intelligence. Be shameless in asking for clarification and more context. The person speaking in jargon may not even realize that’s what they are doing.

To meet the other person where they are, try paraphrasing what they are saying. For example, “I think what you’re explaining is this, is that correct? If not, can you fill in the pieces for me?” It signals to the other person that you’re paying attention and that you’re invested in the conversation.

To that, it’s also an opportunity to provide feedback. Once you have a grasp of the jargon, offer helpful suggestions to the content creator. Offer concrete suggestions, not just, “You should do this and that”. Help them understand why it didn’t land the first time. Chances are, they may only be aware of their perspective and could benefit from hearing yours.

We all want to be as clear as we can when communicating. Sometimes, we stumble and create barriers to understanding by incorporating too much jargon. Have someone take a second look at your content to make sure it’s helpful and informative, not alienating. Continue to challenge yourself to reduce the use of jargon and ask for clarification when you do come across it. There are times when the use of jargon is acceptable. When using it, be sure to include context and definitions to make your content inclusive.

What are your feelings about using jargon? Reply to this email to tell me or come join the conversation in our Free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this week’s In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris discuss how to do practices like predictive analytics and classical AI/machine learning when you’re data-poor. What data is available to forecast and work with? How do you create data when you don’t have it, and what strategic advantage might this confer? Tune in to find out!

Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »

Last time on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Livestream, we dug into how to make use of the data-driven customer journey. Catch the episode replay here!

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Diagnostic Reports of GA4 Health, Part 3 of 4

As we covered recently on the Trust Insights livestream, Google Analytics 4 can be a bit cumbersome to use. So starting this week, I’ll be sharing a four part series on diagnostic analytics for GA4, to understand whether or not your GA4 is working correctly. It’s important to note that we won’t be examining GA4 for marketing purposes – this is bare bones, bare metal “is it working?” Stuff.

This week, let’s dig into pages receiving direct traffic. I personally extract the data from GA4 via the API but you can easily build this chart in seconds in the Explorations menu. Choose default channel grouping and page path as your dimensions and sessions as your metric, then apply a filter on the default channel grouping to direct:

What this chart shows is exactly what it sounds like – pages getting direct traffic. Recall that direct traffic is traffic that Google thinks has come to your website without other attribution data. There’s no other source, so Google thinks someone more or less typed the URL into your site, or clicked a link from some non-web source like a bookmark.

If your site has more than 25% direct traffic, there’s a chance that a good chunk of that traffic may be coming from a campaign that has improper tagging and tracking. For example, with some email readers, if you don’t attach UTM tracking codes to links in your email, they will come in as direct traffic.

In some browsers and operating systems, even ad-specific codes like gclids or fbclids (the tracking IDs of Google Ads and Facebook ads, respectively) can be removed. Apple’s iOS operating system that powers iPhones and iPads is famous for stripping off ad tracking codes; UTM codes thus far are unaffected, so if you’re running an ad campaign that has ad tracking codes but no UTM codes, that traffic can end up in direct traffic.

What we’re looking for specifically here are pages that are campaign landing pages. It’s fine, expected, and even important that your homepage receive the most direct traffic. This is the traffic that is most likely being generated from people typing in a domain name like TrustInsights.ai right into their browser. It’s also fine and expected, if your company offers some kind of service that you log in to use, for the login page to receive a very high amount of direct traffic. People who bookmark landing pages to log into their account will come in as direct traffic, and that’s an accurate representation of what’s going on.

What’s problematic is when you see pages you’ve set up for paid campaigns receiving a lot of direct traffic. If you have solid governance and page naming standards, you might have a landing page prefix like lp_spring_2024_offer or something equally obvious – and then when you look at this chart, you know right away that the landing page is getting more direct traffic than it should be. In general, pages on your website that are landing pages for paid campaigns should have ZERO direct traffic. People should be finding their way to those pages principally through ads and other paid mechanisms; if those pages are getting direct traffic in any serious quantity, then you’re spending money on traffic you can’t track and attribute.

Once you identify pages that are getting inappropriate amounts of direct traffic, go find out what campaigns are running and double check their setup to ensure tracking is in place.

In the last post in this series, we’re going to take a look at default channel grouping traffic.

Shameless plug: if you want these analyses done for you, rather than you doing them yourself, contact us.

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