As the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing land­scape grows increas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive, lots of busi­ness­es are turn­ing to ana­lyt­ics to under­stand their cus­tomers and cre­ate bet­ter expe­ri­ences for them. With more trans­ac­tions mov­ing online and busi­ness­es under mount­ing pres­sure to max­imise their mar­ket­ing bud­gets, insights from dig­i­tal ana­lyt­ics tools are even more critical.

It’s unde­ni­able that bet­ter ana­lyt­ics lead to bet­ter mar­ket­ing strate­gies. How­ev­er, amidst major shifts in con­sumer behav­iour and pri­va­cy poli­cies, cur­rent data ana­lyt­ics tools aren’t with­out their lim­i­ta­tions. And in the absence of reli­able ana­lyt­ics, busi­ness­es are unable to make sound decisions.

Enter Google Ana­lyt­ics 4 (GA4): Google’s new solu­tion to nav­i­gate these chal­lenges and under­stand cus­tomers’ com­plex, mul­ti-plat­form jour­neys across — all while pri­ori­tis­ing privacy.

Undoubt­ed­ly, GA4 grants you access to a pletho­ra of ana­lyt­ics, but how exact­ly do you lever­age them? Which reports and met­rics should you be pri­ori­tis­ing to boost traf­fic, engage­ment, and conversions?

If you want to lev­el up your mar­ket­ing efforts, keep read­ing! We’ll be look­ing at how to do that and more with Google Ana­lyt­ics’ lat­est ver­sion: GA4.

How Can Data Analytics Improve Your Marketing Strategy?

Assump­tions can be cost­ly, which is why ana­lyt­ics are their much more pow­er­ful coun­ter­part. They pro­vide a wealth of infor­ma­tion to help opti­mise your mar­ket­ing efforts in the most rel­e­vant way.

They also tell you more about your audi­ence, your site’s per­for­mance and how you can lever­age your most effec­tive efforts. In addi­tion, data analytics:

• Inform deci­sion making
• Guide strat­e­gy formulation
• Track the progress and per­for­mance of your strategies
• Reveal key areas of improve­ment to help opti­mise your mar­ket­ing efforts
• Help you get a bet­ter return on invest­ment from your mar­ket­ing efforts over the long term.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Ana­lyt­ics (GA) is a pow­er­ful free tool by Google for analysing and mon­i­tor­ing impor­tant data relat­ed to your web­site’s per­for­mance and its users. The lat­est ver­sion of Google Ana­lyt­ics (GA4) is built around users and events and pre­dicts user behav­iour bet­ter than pre­vi­ous versions.

With greater flex­i­bil­i­ty and user pre­dic­tion capa­bil­i­ties, it’s all you need to gath­er enhanced insights.

7 Benefits of Google Analytics 4

GA4 is pow­ered by machine learn­ing to give you access to pow­er­ful pre­dic­tive insights, as well as a more com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of your audi­ence across dif­fer­ent devices and plat­forms. The pri­va­cy-first design is made to keep up with indus­try changes so there are few­er gaps in your data.

Through pow­er­ful user-cen­tric met­rics and dimen­sions dri­ven by AI, GA4 pre­dicts cus­tomer actions and val­ue; and pro­vides a gold­mine of infor­ma­tion to max­imise your efforts. Unlike pre­vi­ous ver­sions of Google Ana­lyt­ics, GA4 offers:

1. A bet­ter way to track cus­tomers’ journeys

2. More rel­e­vant audi­ences for your ad campaigns

3. Enhance­ments to user engage­ment analysis

4. Eas­i­er Goals and Events Configuration

5. Intel­li­gent user pri­va­cy and track­ing capabilities

6. A wider range of parameters

7. Improved visu­al­i­sa­tions and reporting

4 Ways to Use Google Analytics to Level Up Your Marketing Efforts

To get start­ed, you’ll need to migrate to GA4 if you have an active Google Ana­lyt­ics account. As the old­er ver­sion of GA, or Uni­ver­sal Ana­lyt­ics, will offi­cial­ly stop work­ing on 1 July 2023, make the switch to GA4 now to get ahead.

If you don’t have a GA account, sign up for one and use the Google Tag man­ag­er to get started.

1. Get familiar with the interface

Let’s explore GA4’s inno­v­a­tive interface.

Search Bar

The search bar gives you access to instant answers to your queries, spe­cif­ic reports, insights, set­tings or help con­tent. For instance, you can search for “top users by loca­tion” or “sales by traf­fic source.”

Home

The home page sum­maris­es web­site traf­fic, con­ver­sions, and rev­enue. It’s a quick way to check that every­thing is work­ing as expect­ed. The inter­face is intu­itive, mean­ing you’ll get to see more per­son­alised con­tent over time.

To your left is a nav­i­ga­tion pane con­tain­ing the fol­low­ing sections:

• Home
• Reports
• Explo­ration
• Adver­tis­ing
• Con­fig­ure

The Overview card dis­plays the met­rics that are rel­e­vant to you. To your right is a nifty Real­time report sec­tion. As you pan down, you’ll see fre­quent­ly viewed pages. You’ll also see the Insights and Rec­om­men­da­tions section.

Here, GA4 pro­vides you with insights about anom­alies, emerg­ing trends, and any­thing else it deems insight­ful. It’ll also give you rec­om­men­da­tions based on your set­tings, his­tor­i­cal data, and trends across GA4. Last­ly, you can adjust the date range for your cards from the default 7 days to a time­frame of your choice.

2. Understand the Basic GA4 Reports

GA4 includes a cus­tomis­able Reports snap­shot report, a Real­time report and a set of col­lec­tions and top­ics which con­tain pre­de­fined reports. Let’s look at col­lec­tions first.

Lifecycle Collection

The life­cy­cle col­lec­tion breaks down user activ­i­ty at each stage of the cus­tomer jour­ney. The reports gen­er­at­ed include the following:

• Acqui­si­tion — where your traf­fic comes from, how users get to your site and your traf­fic gen­er­a­tion efforts.
• Engage­ment — mea­sures engage­ment across the web pages that users vis­it, as well as cer­tain events
• Mon­eti­sa­tion — how much rev­enue you gen­er­ate from your website
• Reten­tion — how often and how long cus­tomers engage with your web­site after their first visit

User collection

The user col­lec­tion helps you under­stand who uses your web­site. The col­lec­tion gen­er­ates the fol­low­ing reports:

• Demo­graph­ics — groups your users by char­ac­ter­is­tics such as age, gen­der, loca­tion, lan­guage, and inter­ests (as deter­mined through online brows­ing and pur­chase activities)
• Tech — shows you traf­fic by the tech­nol­o­gy your users use

3. Use reports to level up your marketing efforts

What can you track with GA4’s default reports? Well, a lot. And how can these insights help you lev­el up your mar­ket­ing efforts? Here’s how:

Track changes in real-time

How to access this fea­ture: click Reports > Real­time on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel.

Real­time helps you mon­i­tor activ­i­ty on your web­site in real-time up to the last 30 min­utes. The dimen­sions and met­rics fea­tured are all about how you acquire users. You can see how users first enter your con­ver­sion fun­nel and track their behav­iour once they’re in the funnel.

Real­time also allows you to mon­i­tor the imme­di­ate effect that new cam­paigns and site changes have on your traf­fic. For instance, you can check if a pro­mo­tion is dri­ving traf­fic to your web­site. You can also mon­i­tor how a par­tic­u­lar post on a social net­work is affect­ing your traffic.

If you’re run­ning mul­ti­ple cam­paigns and want to see how they stack up against each oth­er, you can apply com­par­isons to gen­er­ate this infor­ma­tion quickly.

Track your acquisitions

How to access this fea­ture: click Reports > Acqui­si­tion on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel.

GA4 organ­is­es acqui­si­tion infor­ma­tion into users, ses­sions, and events. Here are some key terms to get famil­iar with:

A user is some­one who inter­acts with your web­site. Each per­son who does this is count­ed as a sep­a­rate user. If a user leaves and comes back, GA4 still sees them as one user.

A ses­sion refers to the time between when a user access­es your web­site and when they leave. If a user com­pletes a spe­cif­ic action on your web­site and leaves — only to return the next day to com­plete anoth­er one, GA4 counts this as two sep­a­rate sessions.

An event allows you to mea­sure a dis­tinct user inter­ac­tion with­in a ses­sion. Actions such as adding some­thing to a shop­ping cart, load­ing a page or com­plet­ing a pur­chase are exam­ples of inter­ac­tions you can mea­sure using events.

GA4 auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ates sev­er­al actions and events. For those that aren’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly tracked, set-up is much eas­i­er and requires much less time to imple­ment than old­er ver­sions of GA.

The Acqui­si­tion overview sum­maris­es your acqui­si­tion data to show you where your traf­fic comes from. By iden­ti­fy­ing your most valu­able traf­fic medi­ums or sources, you can focus your mar­ket­ing efforts and adjust your bud­get accordingly.

Addi­tion­al­ly, inte­grat­ing this with your Google Ads account gen­er­ates sum­ma­ry cards that can fur­ther help you mea­sure the impact of spe­cif­ic mar­ket­ing campaigns.

To see how your traf­fic is chang­ing over time and to spot con­cern­ing trends, adjust the date range. You can see data from the last 7 to 90 days or even up to the last cal­en­dar year. What have you done dif­fer­ent­ly in a spe­cif­ic time peri­od? Has that result­ed in a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive change to your traf­fic lev­els for that period?

Use the User acqui­si­tion top­ic to take a deep­er look at your traf­fic medi­ums (organ­ic search, social, refer­ral etc.) and the engage­ment lev­els for each. Where do your most engaged users come from? What are you doing on that spe­cif­ic medi­um to attract them? How can you repli­cate your approach across your oth­er mediums?

With access to engage­ment rates for each of your traf­fic medi­ums, you can gauge how effec­tive your traf­fic gen­er­a­tion efforts are.

Track engagement

How to access this fea­ture: click Reports > Engage­ment on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel.

Instead of bounce rate, you now have sev­er­al engage­ment met­rics to choose from. GA4’s engage­ment rate pro­vides valu­able insight into how users inter­act with your web­site rather than how often they leave.

A ses­sion is con­sid­ered engaged when a visitor

• Active­ly uses your web­site for over 10 seconds
• Views two or more pages
• Trig­gers one or more con­ver­sion events

The Engage­ment top­ic helps you mea­sure user engage­ment by 1) the events and con­ver­sion events trig­gered by users and 2) the web pages users vis­it. You’re able to iden­ti­fy pages with the most engage­ment and under­stand user behav­iour through events.

You can gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your user expe­ri­ence and how to improve it. Plus, you can see if your con­tent is res­onat­ing with your audience.

The Engage­ment overview gives you a com­plete pic­ture of user engage­ment on your web­site by dis­play­ing a trend line for each met­ric you’re com­par­ing. To see met­rics for dif­fer­ent dimen­sions, e.g., mobile users or desk­top users vs all users, sim­ply add comparisons.

This helps you iden­ti­fy which dimen­sions dri­ve the high­est engage­ment lev­els, so you can tai­lor your efforts accord­ing­ly. For instance, low­er engage­ment for mobile users might sug­gest that your web­site isn’t mobile-friendly.

Valu­able engage­ment trends can also be iden­ti­fied by chang­ing date ranges. Are there any con­cern­ing spikes or dips? What site or con­tent updates may have led to these changes?

Analyse user stick­i­ness ratios to under­stand how you retain users over time. If your ratios are high, this sug­gests good engage­ment and user reten­tion. If they’re not look­ing good, it may sug­gest that you need to under­stand your audi­ence bet­ter and improve your nur­tur­ing strate­gies to retain more customers.

Detailed infor­ma­tion about events and con­ver­sions can be found under Events. By analysing these reports, you can see how users nav­i­gate your site and which spe­cif­ic events dri­ve or deter conversions.

By track­ing the typ­i­cal cus­tomer jour­ney through your site, you can spot what’s work­ing and what isn’t. You can iden­ti­fy which actions are caus­ing fric­tion and update them to cre­ate a more seam­less experience.

Pages and screens help you dis­cov­er your best-per­form­ing con­tent so you can opti­mise your con­tent strat­e­gy. This is incred­i­bly impor­tant for con­ver­sions, not to men­tion cru­cial for SEO. Once you’ve deter­mined your best-per­form­ing con­tent, make more of it and spread it across your chan­nels for even greater impact.

Track your revenue

How to access this fea­ture: click Reports > Mon­eti­sa­tion on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel.

To see the total rev­enue you gen­er­ate from pur­chas­es, sub­scrip­tions, and adver­tis­ing (if applic­a­ble), use the Mon­eti­sa­tion overview report. This pow­er­ful snap­shot helps you eval­u­ate your busi­ness per­for­mance. By mon­i­tor­ing rev­enue data over time, you’re bet­ter able to spot dynam­ics and trends — and adjust where necessary.

For a deep­er analy­sis of the rev­enue you gen­er­ate from sales on your web­site, the E‑commerce pur­chas­es report is available.

Track retention

How to access this fea­ture: click Reports > Reten­tion on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel.

The Reten­tion top­ic helps you under­stand how often and how long users engage with your web­site after their first vis­it. It also helps you deter­mine how valu­able users are based on the addi­tion­al rev­enue you gen­er­ate after their first visit.

Com­par­ing the num­ber of new vs return­ing users can alert you to qual­i­ty or con­tent issues. Hav­ing few or no return­ing vis­i­tors may indi­cate that your web­site isn’t meet­ing your audi­ence’s needs.

The User reten­tion by cohort graph shows you how well your site retains users by cohort. A cohort is a col­lec­tion of users who are grouped accord­ing to some cri­te­ria. A strong down­ward trend points to a reten­tion problem.

The User engage­ment by cohort graph shows the aver­age amount of time users spend engaged on your web­site after their first vis­it. An upward trend sug­gests that your efforts are pay­ing off and your audi­ence is get­ting more val­ue from your web­site over time.

The User engage­ment chart shows the aver­age engage­ment time of users who return with­in the first 42 days. The more engaged return­ing users are, the more val­ue they’re receiv­ing — and there’s a greater like­li­hood that they’ll con­tin­ue to make purchases.

The Life­time val­ue chart shows the aver­age rev­enue from new users over their first 120 days. This helps you deter­mine how valu­able users are to your busi­ness. You can track life­time val­ue for users across var­i­ous chan­nels and, with this infor­ma­tion, make well-informed chan­nel invest­ment decisions.

Track demographics

How to access this fea­ture: click User > Demo­graph­ics on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel.

The Demo­graph­ics top­ic helps you visu­alise data relat­ed to user age, gen­der, loca­tion, lan­guage, and inter­ests. Demo­graph­ics allow you to:

• Seg­ment your audi­ence into groups of users with sim­i­lar characteristics
• For­mu­late the right strategies
• Tar­get seg­ments with rel­e­vant and engag­ing mar­ket­ing messages
• Boost your con­ver­sions through a more per­son­alised and focused approach

Track Technology

How to access this fea­ture: click Users > Tech on the left nav­i­ga­tion panel

The Tech top­ic shows traf­fic based on the tech­nol­o­gy your audi­ence uses. Under­stand­ing how your users con­sume your con­tent allows you to opti­mise your web­site. You can track engage­ment lev­els across oper­at­ing sys­tems, browsers, and devices. This helps ensure that 1) your site is mobile-friend­ly and 2) that it has great func­tion­al­i­ty across dif­fer­ent browsers.

4. Leverage GA4 explorations for even deeper insight

How to access this fea­ture: Click Explore > Tem­plate gallery to enable this feature.

GA4 allows you to analyse your audi­ence through pow­er­ful audi­ence dis­cov­ery and com­par­i­son tools. These ‘explo­rations’ go beyond the stan­dard reports to help you uncov­er deep­er insights about cus­tomer behaviour.

Key tech­niques to focus on include:

Cohort exploration

This advanced tool allows you to explore the behav­iour and per­for­mance of groups shar­ing com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics over a cer­tain peri­od. For exam­ple, you can group users accord­ing to ‘acqui­si­tion date’ and com­pare them using sev­er­al metrics.

User Lifetime

User life­time analy­sis allows you to analyse how users behave over the course of their life­time as cus­tomers. Dis­cov­er unique behav­iours and iden­ti­fy which efforts get you high-val­ue users.

Take advan­tage of GA4’s pre­dic­tive capa­bil­i­ties to deter­mine the pur­chase prob­a­bil­i­ty of cer­tain users and cam­paigns. You’ll know exact­ly how to man­age your spend­ing and, pos­si­bly, dis­cov­er lucra­tive user segments.

Funnel exploration

Fun­nel explo­ration helps you visu­alise the steps tak­en by users to com­plete an event. For exam­ple, you can analyse how prospects become buy­ers and then repeat buy­ers. You can see how they per­form at each step and opti­mise their jour­neys to boost conversions.

Segment overlap

GA4 takes the pow­er of seg­ments to a whole new lev­el. With the seg­ment over­lap fea­ture, you can com­pare up to 3 user seg­ments. This allows you to iden­ti­fy how these seg­ments relate to each oth­er. From there, you can iso­late new audi­ences based on more com­plex con­di­tions. You can then cre­ate new lucra­tive seg­ments to tar­get based on these findings.

User exploration

The user explo­ration fea­ture allows you to select spe­cif­ic groups of users and drill down on their indi­vid­ual user activ­i­ties. Armed with this infor­ma­tion, per­son­al­i­sa­tion is a breeze.

Path explo­ration

This tool allows you to explore user jour­neys through a tree graph. You can spot the following:

• The top pages new users vis­it after land­ing on your home page.
• Where users are get­ting stuck on their journeys
• How cer­tain events affect sub­se­quent user actions

Final thoughts

AI-dri­ven and user-cen­tric, GA4 can be quite a learn­ing curve at first. But, once you get into the flow of things, you can delve into more advanced reports and explo­ration tech­niques. You’ll be able to gen­er­ate robust, action­able data and dis­cov­er a wealth of insights to pow­er your decision-making.

If you’re up for the chal­lenge, take advan­tage of GA4’s vast cus­tomi­sa­tion capa­bil­i­ties and unlock even more pow­er­ful insights to grow your business.

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