Episode Transcript
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/Hello everyone, and welcomeback to the podcast, your go to
source for real and relevantdiscussions on franchise
business and marketing.
I'm your host Vera Shafiq, andtoday I'm excited to share some
insights on how you can amp upyour marketing strategy using
Microsoft Clarity.
We're going to explore howClarity works in parallel with
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GA4.
Where Clarity truly excels andwhich features a CMO should have
their team focus on forimmediate impact.
Now, if you're already using GA4to track your website's
quantitative data, like events,conversions, user flows, then
you already have a strongfoundation, but sometimes the
numbers alone don't tell thewhole story.
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And that's where MicrosoftClarity comes in.
So let's dive into what Clarityis and how it can compliment
your existing GA4 setup.
So Microsoft Clarity is a freeuser behavior analytics tool,
that provides a more qualitativelook at how visitors interact
with your website.
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So GA4 is really good atcapturing numerical data, such
as session duration, bouncerates, or engagement rates.
Conversion metrics.
Clarity, on the other hand,gives you a visual perspective.
It does this through sessionrecordings and heatmaps, which
allow you to literally see howusers are navigating your
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website.
So, one thing I noticed is GA4can be very technical,
especially since the evolutionof GA3 to GA4.
Things have got a little bitmore techie in there, and I know
a lot of marketers struggledwith the new version of Google
Analytics, which is GA4, and soI think Microsoft Clarity fills
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a really kind of important gapin the need for a tool that's
going to be more visual, moreMore, um, conducive to a
marketer's point of view, andthat really gives us the ability
to see things as they happenand, and as I said, get more
qualitative data on what's goingon on the website.
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So if you're tracking yourwebsite performance with GA4 and
you're noticing, for example, alow engagement rate on a
specific landing page.
GA4 will tell you what ishappening, but Clarity can show
you why it's happening.
So by watching the sessionrecordings, you can observe
exactly how visitors areinteracting with your page.
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Things like, you know, are theygetting stuck on a confusing
element or is a call to action?
Maybe not drawing enoughattention.
Clarity can help you answerthese questions by providing the
why behind the numbers.
So let's talk a little bit aboutusing Microsoft Clarity in
parallel with GA4.
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One of the most powerfulstrategies in digital marketing
is combining quantitative datawith qualitative insights.
So here's how I recommend usingClarity alongside GA4.
Start with the numbers.
Use GA4 as your primary tool forgathering baseline metrics
across your website.
So you can look at KPIs likeengagement rate, engaged
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sessions, conversion funnels,conversion rates, identify pages
that might be underperforming.
Then once you've pinpointed anarea of concern using GA4,
Switch over to clarity to get acloser look.
The session recordings will helpyou understand user behavior in
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context.
So for example, if a landingpage is underperforming.
Clarity's recordings mightreveal that users are getting
confused by the layout ordistracted by unnecessary
elements.
Then I would say use Clarityheatmaps as a diagnostic tool.
Heatmaps are a fantastic featureof Clarity.
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They visually represent whereusers are clicking, scrolling,
and even hesitating.
And this visual data canhighlight which parts of your
pages are engaging and whichparts are being ignored.
And then you'll get really someimmediate insights into what you
might need to rework in terms ofthe layout or the functionality
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of your website.
Clarity can even flag rageclicks.
So, you know, I love thisfeature.
It's a feature where you can seewhere users are being
frustrated.
Um, essentially doing repeatedclicks in frustration, right.
In one place.
And those are called rageclicks, or it can also show you
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dead clicks.
So clicks on non interactiveelements.
And this will alert you topotential user experience
issues.
That might be driving thosevisitors away.
So if you're a CMO looking toquickly boost marketing
performance, uh, I would say thekey features of Microsoft
Clarity to focus on are.
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Session recordings, heat maps,rage clicks and dead clicks, and
performance insight.
So let's start with sessionrecordings.
This is a really cool feature.
Um, session recordings, let youobserve the entire user journey
and you can watch real sessions,quickly spot friction points,
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uh, understand where users aregetting stuck, identify elements
that are causing frustration,and then And this kind of
immediate firsthand observationcan really get you, on the path
to solving a lot of your UX anddesign problems.
Next, let's talk about heatmaps.
Heat maps provide a visualsummary of user engagement.
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They can show you which areas ofyour page receive the most
attention and which pages arelargely being ignored.
For franchise businesses,especially where, you know,
local landing pages might differin performance.
I think heat maps can help us tounderstand regional differences
in user behavior and allow us totweak the pages accordingly.
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Then let's look at rage clicksand dead clicks.
So Clarity's ability tohighlight rage clicks, where
users are repeatedly clicking onan element out of frustration,
and then the dead clicks, whichare those elements that aren't
interactive, can quicklyusability issues.
Once we address these issues, wecan then, we can then reduce
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bounce rates and just improveoverall user satisfaction.
And then finally, performanceinsights.
Although Clarity is not a fullfledged performance monitoring
tool, it does provide insightsinto page load times and
responsiveness.
These insights are reallyimportant because even a few
seconds of a delay cansignificantly impact user
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engagement and conversions.
So let's put this into apractical scenario.
So you are managing the digitalpresence for a franchise with
multiple locations.
Each location has its ownlanding page tailored for local
promotions and, um, just localcontent.
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So here's how you can leverageboth GA4 and Clarity to optimize
these pages.
First, you're going to do abaseline analysis with GA4.
You're going to start by usingGA4 to collect key metrics for
each local landing page.
And identify which pages havelower engagement rates, lower
session durations, or poorconversion rates compared with
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the system wide average.
Then you're going to go intoclarity and you're going to
investigate session recordings.
Um, so you're going to watch thesession recordings for
underperforming pages and lookfor common patterns.
Are visitors getting confused bythe layout or is there a
particular section where they'rehesitating or clicking
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repeatedly in frustration?
Then in Clarity again, you'regoing to check out the heat maps
and specifically for the lowperforming landing pages, you're
going to see where visitors areclicking and how far down the
page that are actuallyscrolling.
And you might notice somethingabout call to action buttons not
receiving enough attention.
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And things that might indicatethat, you know, that specific
local landing page needs, uh,some, some rejiggering or some
redesigning, or just a littlebit of adjustment, then you're
going to iterate and test.
So using the insights fromclarity.
So if, for example, a form onone specific local landing page
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is causing users to drop off,maybe it's time to simplify the,
the form or break it up intosome more steps, um, but do
something to really justimplement some change on that
page, and then you can use GA4to monitor the impact and see if
conversion rates went up.
And then the last step, which Ithink is really important is to
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create that continuous feedbackloop.
So you want to create a routinewhere your marketing team is
reviewing both the GA4 and theclarity data on a regular basis,
right?
So weekly or biweekly.
And so this continuous feedbackloop and testing loop is going
to ensure that improvements areongoing and that you're always
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aligning your digital presencewith.
The needs of your users.
All right.
So let's move on to some of thelimitations of Clarity.
So, you know, Clarity is a greattool.
I highly recommend that youimplement it because it is free
and it really has some excellentfeatures, um, for being a free
tool that it just would be ashame if you didn't put it to
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use.
but let's just talk about someof the drawbacks.
So it's not built for deepcustom event tracking like GA4
is.
While it does give you a greatoverview of these session
recordings and heat maps, if youneed highly granular, tailored
tracking, you will still need torely on GA4.
Then, uh, there's the dataretention piece.
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So clarity will retain data for90 days.
And, um, so if you're lookingfor a long term trend analysis,
then you might be limited justbecause of that 90 day limit.
Uh, next is the advancedreporting and segmentation.
So if you're looking forintricate segmentation or
advanced custom dashboards oranything of that nature, clarity
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is somewhat basic.
so it's really meant tocompliment and not replace your
other analytics tools.
And then finally the AIfeatures.
So, you know how I love AIfeatures.
Um, unfortunately Clarity doesnot have too much of an AI
presence currently.
Uh, it has some rule basedautomation.
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It can detect those rage clicksor those dead clicks, but
they're not really driven byadvanced machine learning or
predictive analytics.
So, they're helpful alerts, butnot really dynamic in the way
that AI could be.
And this might change, they maybe adding some of this into the
system, but as of now, nothingtoo powerful in terms of AI.
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One common concern is, um, doyou need to watch hundreds of
screen recordings to uncover thebehavior patterns that we talked
about?
Well, the good news is no, youdon't have to do that.
Clarity aggregates behavior.
In heat maps and allows you tofilter those recordings by
specific pages, devices, ortypes of interactions.
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So you could quite easily zeroin on problematic areas without
manually having to watch everysingle session.
Um, and similarly, you don'tneed to tag individual pages.
So when you are setting upclarity.
It's really a simple install.
It's just a matter of putting apiece of code, snippet of code
on your Google Tag Manager onyour website.
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And that snippet is going totrack your entire website and
monitor every pageautomatically.
So you'll have comprehensivecoverage, um, with minimal setup
effort.
Many marketers ask if Claritycan replace tools such as Hotjar
or Crazy Egg.
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So Hotjar and CrazyEgg are paidtools that do a very similar
thing than what Clarity does,which is those heat maps, screen
recordings, uh, you know,qualitative data analysis.
I would say for the corefeatures, Clarity does a great
job and it's completely free.
However, Hotjar and CrazyEgg andother tools like them, which are
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paid, offer additionalfunctionalities.
Um, they do have things likeuser surveys, polls, more
advanced segmentation.
So if those types of featuresare critical to your strategy,
you might still want to staywith the paid solutions or even
just use them in tandem withClarity.
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Another question I often getabout Clarity is can Clarity do
A B testing?
And the answer is no.
Clarity unfortunately isn'tdesigned to run A B tests, but
it is a powerful companion tool.
So you would still continue toset up your A B testing using
dedicated platforms like,Optimizely or VWO, and then use
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Clarity to visually analyze howthose users are interacting with
each variant.
So again, it's an add on tooland it isn't, um a silver bullet
to everything.
All right.
So let's just sum up what wetalked about today and really
what are the immediate steps.
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That CMOs or marketing leadersshould be taking to integrate
Microsoft Clarity into yourexisting marketing strategy.
So I would say, first of all,since it's free and easy to
implement, add it to yourwebsite as soon as possible,
right?
There's absolutely no reason whyyou shouldn't be adding that
code snippet and letting Claritystart tracking and gathering
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data.
Make sure that it's running inparallel with your GA4 so that
you can start correlating thedata from both tools.
Secondly, I would focus on hightraffic areas.
So prioritize the pages on yourwebsite that are driving the
most traffic or the pages thatare most critical to your
conversion goals.
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Uh, a lot of times these are thelocal landing pages as we talked
about, but this will provide youthe most immediate insight and
opportunity for improvement.
Thirdly, I would set up regularreview meetings with your team
to, uh, take a look and see whatclarity is showing us or
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revealing.
So in less than 30 minutes aweek, I think you could get some
significant insights and abilityto identify issues really
quickly and nip them in the budbefore they become a bigger
problem.
Fourthly, I would use Clarity asa cross departmental tool.
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So don't let Clarity sit withinyour marketing team and your
marketing team alone.
I would definitely involve youruser experience designers, your
web developers, and even yourcustomer service teams.
Uh, because you're going to geta lot of insight that pertains
to these departments as well.
And that is very relevant forthese departments.
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So take a holistic approach andmake sure that all aspects of
the user journey are optimizedusing Clarity.
And then finally I wouldcelebrate quick wins because
Clarity is going to uncover abunch of things which you may
not have found had you not divedinto it, right?
So as you implement thesechanges and improvements, share
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the wins with your entireorganization and celebrate the
quick wins so that you can buildmomentum and encourage.
Some further data drivendecision making.
All right.
Well, that's it for today.
Thanks for joining me on thisdeep dive into leveraging
Microsoft Clarity alongside GA4.
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I hope you found these insightsvaluable and that you're now
inspired to integrate thesetools into your marketing
strategy.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please subscribe, share it with
your colleagues and leave areview.
Your feedback helps me bring youmore real and relevant
discussions on franchisebusiness and marketing.
Until next time, this is VeraShafik signing off, keep
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innovating, keep optimizing andmake data work for you.