Beginner’s Guide To Using Supermetrics, Reporting Automation Tool That Pulls Marketing Metrics

As a digital marketer, your task isn’t only about executing campaigns. It also includes analyzing the various marketing metrics, reporting on them and making data-informed decisions to optimize campaign performance.

Today, we’ll learn about one such tool that can make our lives easier by automatically pulling PPC, SEO, social and web analytics data into one place… Supermetrics.

Here’s a guide on how to use Supermetrics.

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Pricing

Before we dive into using Supermetrics, let’s take a look at the different types of Supermetrics.

Supermetrics has different pricing for different products:

• Supermetrics for Google Sheets
• Supermetrics for Data Studio
• Supermetrics for Excel
• etc.

So do consider where you want your data to be pulled into!

In this article, I’ll be using Supermetrics for Google Sheets.

Create Query

The first step is pulling in data and this can be done by creating a query.

Since Supermetrics is a marketing add-on, you’ll have to click on Add-ons at the top menu bar of Google Sheets. Next, Launch sidebar under Supermetrics.

Select a cell that you want the data to appear in.

Supermetrics sidebar is where you configure the data.

• Data Source: Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google Analytics etc.
• Select Accounts
• Select Dates: When choosing your date range, you can set ‘yesterday’ as end date so Supermetrics pull data up to yesterday.
• Select Metrics
• Split By: You can split your data into rows and columns here
• Filter: Limit your data by specifying conditions (eg. only show data for campaigns that match RegEx Jun2019$)
• Options: You might choose to enable No header row so that you can use your own custom headers, instead of Supermetrics default headers.

Once you’re done, click on Get Data to Table and the data will appear in the cell you selected.

Note that you can click on the down arrow (▾) next to Get Data to Table▾ to insert the data as other chart types:

• Table
• Column Chart
• Bar Chart
• Line Chart
• Pie Chart
• Donut Chart
• Scatter Chart
• etc.

Modify Query

Let’s say you need to adjust the date range, metrics or filters. In other words, you want to modify your query.

This can be done by simply clicking on the cell that has a Supermetrics query.

Make sure that the sidebar is already launched. If it isn’t, launch the sidebar.

After a while, the sidebar will display the query information of the cell you selected.

Click on Modify and you can change the query information.

Manually Refresh Query

You will need to refresh your query so that Supermetrics will pull in the latest data.

One way to do this is by manually refreshing your query.

Again, click on the cell that you want to refresh, wait for the sidebar to load the query information then click on Refresh. You can do this if you only have a few cells to refresh. However, if you have many cells to refresh, this will become tedious.

If you have many cells to refresh, I recommend that you Refresh all (all sheets) or Refresh active sheet (current sheet) under the Supermetrics add-on at the top menu bar. This will save you time.

Automatically Refresh Query By Scheduling Refresh

You can also automatically refresh queries by scheduling the refresh. This way, Supermetrics will automatically refresh queries at the time you specified.

Click on Schedule refresh & emailing under the Supermetrics add-on at the top menu bar.

You can then customize the details

• Action: Refresh data only or refresh and email
• On & Start Processing At: Frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) as well as specific day and time
• Sheet: Choose the sheets you want to refresh
• Type: Select the report type (PDF, Excel etc.)
• Email To: Email address that the report will be sent to
• You can also choose to send email alerts only if queries fail on refresh

Finally, click on Save trigger.

I recommend that you schedule the refresh if you frequently check your data at specific times. You can manually refresh your data during ad hoc times.

Daily Quota For Query Executions

Bear in mind the daily query quota. Depending on your Supermetrics plan, there is a certain amount of queries that you can run per day.

Creating new queries and refreshing queries count into this quota. So does scheduling.

The biggest problem lies in scheduling. Sometimes, you may forget that you’ve created a trigger to refresh periodically. Even if you no longer use the document, the triggers will remain active unless they’re removed. The same applies to files in your recycle bin. Triggers remain active regardless of their location. Hence, it’s important to delete triggers that you no longer need. Add this step into your workflow to remind yourself.

Open Schedule refresh & emailing under the Supermetrics add-on. Then, click on Manage triggers in all your files. You’ll then see all the triggers created by the logged in user. Delete those triggers that you do not need anymore.

Delete Query

As I’ve mentioned earlier about the importance of deleting unneeded queries, here’s how you can delete queries.

Click on the cell that you want to delete Supermetrics data. When the sidebar loads the query information, click on Delete query & data. I prefer deleting query and data, rather than deleting query only. This way, the cell will be blank, indicating that there’s no Supermetrics data inside. You can use this method if you only have a few queries to delete.

However, if you want to delete numerous queries, it’ll be easier to open the SupermetricsQueries sheet and deleting the rows. If you can’t find it, the sheet may be hidden. You simply have to unhide it by clicking on View then Hidden sheets at the top menu bar or clicking on All Sheets at the bottom bar.

Overlapping Queries

Sometimes, even after refreshing the queries, Supermetrics data does not tally with the advertising platforms. You should check the query information first (whether the date range is right, filters are relevant etc.). If it still doesn’t solve your problem, you may consider checking if there are different queries overlapping in the cell.

Hop over to the SupermetricsQueries sheet and examine the Range address. Ensure that there are no duplicates.

If there are duplicates, you may want to delete the queries until you’re only left with one query then edit that query. Or you can delete all duplicates and just create a new query from scratch.

Authentication Errors

There are times when you may encounter an authentication error.

For example, you encounter an authentication error for your Google AdWords or Facebook Ads query. Follow the instructions by Supermetrics and you should be able to re-authenticate yourself.

Now It’s Your Turn

Have you used Supermetrics to pull in data? What kind of data did you pull in with Supermetrics? How was the experience?

Hopefully, these tips give you a better idea of how to use Supermetrics~