Winter quarter is coming to an end *sheds a single tear that is infused with joy and disappointment*. I will graduating in June with a degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. These past four years have been a journey consisting of the typical peaks and valleys; with some slogging through mud in between them. I have confirmed that college is a great experience in that it really allowed me to figure out who I am and what career path I want to take. When I first entered into Western Washington University, I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to go into business, and when family members, colleagues, and others would ask what I was pursuing, I would say something along the lines of, ” I know that I want to go into business but am unsure of what part of business to concentrate on.”

Then it dawned on me. I am MADE for marketing and I have been doing it since I was in 6th grade. For example, my brother and I were pretty bummed out that our middle school stopped selling candy, so we decided that we would take the opportunity to do what any marketer would do; fulfill the needs of customers. We purchased Skittles in bulk from the local Cash-n-Carry, and then we sold them for a dollar each. I remember getting a rush after each sale (it could have possibly been a sugar rush) although unfortunately we consumed most of our profits so it failed to become the candy empire I had envisioned.

Later on in high school, I started selling high-end clothing and Air Jordan’s through my website www.somefire.com, with the business model of buy-low and sell-high. This was very profitable until people realized that there was little barriers to entry. Soon I was surrounded by competitors from my school, so I decided to use my entrepreneurial spirit to go down a different lane. During my sophomore year of college, I created my own clothing brand called SomeFire, and stepped away from the (now saturated) luxury used clothing market that I had used to love. This custom clothing design experience strengthened my marketer’s mindset. So far I have designed (with the help of my good friend Bobby Davis) three different collections which range from t-shirts, long-sleeve t-shirts, tank-tops, and hoodies. I will be releasing my next collection within the next month.

In January, I participated in the Student Marketing Associations XMC Case Competition with two other colleagues of mine. We met on a rainy Saturday morning at 8AM, we were given an Ivy business case and were asked to build a presentation, recommend what the business should do, and present it after 4 hours. We competed against 11 other teams, and placed first through an emphasis that I can only characterize as ‘unbounded creativity’ . Creativity is usually hindered when under-pressure, but we were able to work as a team to come up with a creative and realistic set of ideas to compete with an elite set of teams who we know would be going ‘by the book’ with their recommendations.

These past three months have been an excellent learning experience. I had the honor of taking a digital marketing class that expanded my digital marketing skills, and this single class has morphed me into a full-stack smarketer (smart-marketer). Within the last three months, I have become certified in Google Analytics, Hubspot Inbound Marketing, Hootsuite Social Media Management, and Google AdWords.

To obtain these certifications I needed to demonstrate to have an in depth knowledge on the topics. I have spent countless hours these past three months studying, blogging, reading, and learning about topics such as:

• Google Analytics
• Mobile Marketing
• Programmatic & Native Ad’s
• Coding
• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Email Marketing
• Creating GREAT Landing Pages
• Growing Your Online Community
• Social Media
• Content Marketing
• A/B Testing
• Inbound Marketing
• Marketing Analytics

This quarter, hands-down, has been my best learning experience thus far in college. The list that you have just read (which include direct links to each topic that I blogged about) shows topics that we were assigned. With these topics, I was asked to not just read an article, but to know like it the back of my hand.

What I can do for you as your digital marketer? Well, a TON really. I am seeking a career in consulting, marketing, or as a marketing consultant and whichever of these directions I end up going, will bring digital marketing knowledge with me. I have gained a relatively vast base of knowledge when it comes to social media, content marketing, analytics, search engine marketing, and other digital marketing disciplines. I will also be participating in a project management crash course after this quarter which eventually will lead to a certification as a project management professional. I am an entrepreneur that loves solving problems, and coming up with great ideas. I have excellent communication skills, and I love working in teams. While being a full-time student at Western Washington University, I also engaged in internships and part-time work at companies such as Nordstroms, Hertz, and Bellingham Marine Industries. As your marketing consultant I will use the knowledge and skills that I have acquired over the past ten years to drive a positive impact for your company.

Throughout this quarter our class had to blog twice a week. Within the last three months, I have typed 22,473 words, and have had 475 views.

I plan to continue to blog every week, but it could get tough when it starts to get nice out, and my final quarter at WWU starts. Until next time fellow smarketer…

Kid Cudi dropped a song a couple days ago titled, Love. It is actually a really great song, and I love it (see what I did there). This could be the first single off of his Man on The Moon III album, which is supposed to drop this year (Praying emoji). Give it a listen below. It is very uplifting, and makes you, well, happy.

https://soundcloud.com/cudderland/love

You might be thinking, “What does this have to do with Google Analytics, Cody Hulsey!?!?!”. Well fellow reader, I love the analytic’s side of digital marketing. Google is the big homie when it comes to analytics. They decided to go out of their way to create a certification course called Google Analytic IQ Certification. They also went out of their way to get you prepped for the certification by providing you with the Google Analytics Platform Principles. I am going to talk about a few of the most interesting things that I learned while watching the informational clips.

When you use Google Analytics you can collect and analyze data across a variety of devices and digital environments. Companies use Google Analytics to understand what their customers find and interact with when it comes to websites and mobile apps, but Analytics can be used to measure behavior on other devices like kiosks, point-of-sale systems, game consoles, and even appliance.

There are four components of the Google Analytics platform:

1. Collection – this component is centered around the idea of collecting data, To successfully collect the data from your customers, you must paste the code on every page of your website that you would like to track.
2. Configuration – you can configure Google Analytics to import data directly into your reports from other Google products, like Google AdWords, Google AdSense, and Google Webmaster Tools. You can also set filters that allow you to remove any data from your own employees (once a filter is set, you will not be able to see your employee’s data again).
3. Processing – in this stage, Google Analytics transforms the raw data from collection using the settings in your Google Analytics account.
4. Reporting – once Google Analytics is done processing, you can view the results of the findings on the reporting interface.

On the reporting page you will see that there is a data model. There are three components to the data model that are crucial to know about:

• User:  a visitor to your website or app.
• Session: the time they spend there.
• Interaction: what they do while they’re on there.

I am going to paint a picture for you because I like coming up with stories. Also because people tend to retain knowledge and feel more connected when they hear a story.

Now close your eyes (not actually because you have to read this). Picture you are the owner of a small high-end fashion boutique. You have lot’s of customers, some who come in and look around at a particular pair of Raf Simons shoes, some that look at a Dries Van Noten Jacket, and some that purchase a Alexander Wang bomber jacket. You also have the customers that come in and ask if you have the most recent collection of the I Love Ugly S/S 15 menswear. When you tell them that you don’t carry that brand, they immediately leave. Think of each of those real life interactions in the same way when thinking about Analytics. You might have 5 interactions with a customer, or you might only have one (the I Love Ugly customer). Then however long a customer was in the store, is their session time.

So how does tracking work? 

Google Analytics uses tracking code to collect all of that precious data. The information that is collected, is shipped off to the Analytics servers via an image request. This image request is considered a “hit”, and it is the Maserati that speeds as fast as possible to Google Analytics.

<!– Google Analytics –>

<script>

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i[GoogleAnalyticsObject]=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){

(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),

m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)

})(window,document,script,//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js,ga);

ga(create, UA-12345-6, auto);

ga(send, pageview);

</script>

<!– End Google Analytics →

In the above code you will see 10 characters that are bolded. This is the tracking code. A lot of websites will ask for you to paste the simplified tracking code and not the whole entire JavaScript text. Simply go into your Google Analytics settings to obtain this tracking code. There is different tracking codes out there. There is tracking code to create hits for websites and then there is tracking code for mobile apps.

Mobile apps don’t use traditional JavaScript code, they use SDKs (Software Development Kit). There are different SDKs out there, it all depends on the operating system i.e. iOS, Android, and etc. These mobile apps have a different way of dispatching as well. Data from mobile apps is not sent out immediately. Instead is stores the data, and then when there is connection to the internet, it’s sent over. SDKs dispatch hits every 30 minutes. So don’t freak out if it doesn’t look like your data is being recorded.

I hope you have came to a better understanding on what Google Analytics is, and what you can do with it. Google Analytics allows you to understand the actions of your customer whether they are on a website, mobile app, kiosk, appliance, or much more. When you realize customers are not viewing certain pages, you can use your creative skills to direct them to that neglected page, possibly with A/B testing? Until next time fellow smarketer…