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The Ultimate Guide for GA4
4 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to the Onya Mic Podcast, where we reveal the secrets of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and how it can revolutionize your marketing efforts. In this episode, we present the ultimate guide to GA4, equipping you with the knowledge and strategies to maximize its potential for your organization.
Key Takeaways That Will Transform Your Analytics Game:
#1 Know the key differences of GA4 to universal analytics: Say goodbye to outdated tracking methods and discover the game-changing features of GA4.
#2 The best practices to implement this for your business: Take advantage of these practices before getting started to make the most of this robust tool.
#3 Privacy and compliance: Consumer privacy is a priority with GA4.
Ready to unleash the power of GA4? Let us help you make your potential into actual growth.
Here's where you'll find us:
Ashley Monk
Facebook: https://facebook.com/iamashleymonk
Instagram: @iamashleymonk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ashleymonk
Onya
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onyamarketing
Instagram: @onyamarketing
Website: https://www.onyamark.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Anya Mike podcast, a podcast where we discuss the ins and outs of marketing, running a business, and tips and tricks the industry may just not be telling you, but we will.
00:00:14
Speaker
If you're looking for inspiration on exactly how to grow your business with ambition, innovation, and confidence, while creating maximum impact to influence your clients like never before, you're in the right place.
00:00:26
Speaker
Hey everyone, I am here today with a super hot topic that so many people have been asking about, have questions about.
Transitioning to Google Analytics 4
00:00:47
Speaker
Almost every time I'm talking to a client, this comes up in some capacity, and that is GA4, otherwise known as Google Analytics 4.
00:00:58
Speaker
More recently, at the time of this recording, we have just transitioned away from Universal Analytics, which has been, up until this point, Google's current version of analytics and how we see data.
00:01:09
Speaker
over into what feels like a little bit of the Wild West online, and that is GA4.
00:01:14
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So we are going to go through today all of the big differences between GA4, what you need to know, some of the features of GA4, privacy concerns, and of course, best practices on how to implement this for your business.
00:01:28
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I'm really, really excited about this change.
00:01:30
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GA4 has made data tracking accessible to so many organizations, and I promise it's not as overwhelming as it may seem.
00:01:38
Speaker
So let's go ahead and start with what is GA4?
00:01:42
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So really simply stated, Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google's web analytics platform.
00:01:49
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And so by design, one of the big limitations of universal analytics
00:01:55
Speaker
is that it's really segmented in what you can see.
00:01:59
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You can't really see a full journey.
00:02:00
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You can see how many sessions someone has on a page.
00:02:03
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You can see the bounce rate.
00:02:05
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You can see how many conversions you've generated.
00:02:07
Speaker
But ultimately, there's not really a clear way to see how this data works together.
00:02:13
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And so GA4 solves that problem.
Understanding GA4's Event-Driven Model
00:02:15
Speaker
So what GA4 does that's a little bit different is that it uses an event-driven model.
00:02:21
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And what I mean by that is instead of with Universal Analytics, everything is recorded as a single session, as I mentioned.
00:02:28
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But GA4, you can actually see a pattern of where one user goes from beginning to end.
00:02:35
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So let's say someone converted on your website.
00:02:38
Speaker
Well, in Universal Analytics, we can see, OK, great, the landing page generated XYZ conversions.
00:02:44
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We really using universal analytics without using third party platforms have no idea what journey that that person took to get to the contact form.
00:02:54
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But with GA4, we can see the entirety of the user interaction as an event.
00:02:59
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And so this is so great for organizations because you can actually create specific actions and behaviors and custom metrics even to really analyze the user journey.
00:03:09
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And so
00:03:11
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GA4 also offers some machine learning opportunities that can really uncover insights and patterns.
00:03:15
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So this is going to be incredibly valuable for marketers of all stages so that you can really understand your audience.
00:03:25
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And so the biggest way and the best analogy that I can use to really describe this is think of universal analytics, almost like still frame photography.
00:03:35
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You can see each beautiful photo
00:03:38
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in its entirety and see those details, but you have no idea what it looked like to set up the photo, what was going on behind the scenes or after.
00:03:46
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And GA4 is almost like a video or you're watching a movie from that standpoint.
00:03:51
Speaker
You can really see the story begin to come to light.
00:03:54
Speaker
And this is so valuable for marketers to know, okay, where let's say you're looking at the data and no one is converting on your website or filling out a form.
00:04:04
Speaker
GA4 is going to let you see, oh, okay, we are losing a ton of people on this page.
00:04:10
Speaker
And so maybe that's at the point of the site or the point of the funnel that they are falling off.
00:04:15
Speaker
So it's going to be really, really helpful for marketers to be able to utilize this kind of data.
00:04:20
Speaker
Again, there's so much software and external software that you can use for this, but a lot of them, again, can take a lot of time to integrate with different platforms.
00:04:27
Speaker
And having this all in Google is going to be so, so nice.
00:04:32
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So let's talk about maybe some of these benefits and features.
00:04:36
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So GA4 has one really cool feature called its User Explorer.
00:04:40
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And so this is what I'm talking about to be able to see the entire journey through the website or even the actions taken.
00:04:48
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Another one is called the Funnel Analysis Report.
00:04:51
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And so this is a feature that lets marketers track the steps toward a goal.
00:04:55
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And so if a user fills out a form, for instance, you can actually see the exact steps taken
00:05:00
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to be able to do this.
00:05:01
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And so in the past, again, this is where spreadsheets really come in handy.
00:05:05
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But this path analysis is going to be so helpful to see the common paths to be able to get there.
00:05:10
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OK, let's talk every marketer's favorite, a.k.a.
00:05:13
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least favorite thing to talk about, and that's privacy concerns.
Privacy Features in GA4
00:05:18
Speaker
It's important to note, I know we'll go into this piece before we talk about best practices, organizations can configure GA4 to anonymize the IP address and really respect the do not track settings.
00:05:30
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That's really important.
00:05:32
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That way marketers can be compliant and there's less precautions that need to be taken or even two step forms that typically have been filled out in the past.
00:05:41
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It's going to make things easier.
00:05:42
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And also, GA4 integrates with Google's consent management platform.
00:05:46
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So this allows businesses to obtain user consent for data collection as well, making it really easy to stay compliant, but also to be able to leverage data.
00:05:57
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So what are some of the things now that GA4 is launched?
00:06:00
Speaker
Hopefully you have migrated what you needed to out of universal analytics.
00:06:05
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What are the things that marketers need to know to get started?
00:06:08
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I would say as a best practice, number one, set up data streams.
Setting Up and Using GA4 Effectively
00:06:12
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So these data streams allow for the flow of data to a customer touch point to analytics to really show that data is being accurately collected.
00:06:20
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So I would set this up to make sure that you can really analyze your data and have that right in front of you.
00:06:26
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The next step is I would, as a best practice, create custom dimensions and metrics.
00:06:31
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This is going to help you track those user behaviors and engagement metrics that may or may not be available in GA4's default reporting.
00:06:39
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The third is to use event parameters.
00:06:41
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So this is going to allow you to add additional context to user interactions or even add event categories.
00:06:48
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And finally, the last one is really regularly monitor data quality in GA4.
00:06:56
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That's going to allow you to make sure your data is accurate.
00:06:59
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I really recommend as a practice so that you know what we do at Anya, how we help our clients and how we evaluate our data internally.
00:07:07
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We optimize, at least for campaigns, we're looking at everything daily.
00:07:10
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We evaluate weekly to see if there's anything that we need to triage monthly.
00:07:16
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or sorry, on a weekly basis.
00:07:19
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Monthly, we look at tactics and other large changes that need to be made.
00:07:22
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And then quarterly, we evaluate all the data to see if any major changes in the strategy need to occur or be shifted.
The Importance of GA4 in Modern Marketing
00:07:29
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So that's kind of our process.
00:07:31
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So I hope that this has been helpful.
00:07:32
Speaker
GA4 is really representing a huge shift in the marketing landscape.
00:07:37
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And that trend that you can really be aware of that paints into a larger story
00:07:42
Speaker
is that really what's centric to the marketing journey is understanding the entire customer journey and orienting the needs around the user.
00:07:50
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I think now the brands that are going to be ahead are really going to be creating a lot of contextual advertising and telling stories to their users to really help contextualize what it is that they do.
00:08:02
Speaker
So I hope that this has been
Q&A and Listener Engagement
00:08:04
Speaker
helpful.
00:08:04
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I'm curious to see if you've got any questions about GA4.
00:08:07
Speaker
If you do, be sure to reach out.
00:08:09
Speaker
We would love to hear from you and hear what you think about this episode.
00:08:13
Speaker
Thanks for joining us this week on the Anya Mike podcast.
00:08:16
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you.
00:08:18
Speaker
Make sure to visit our website, anyamark.com, where you can subscribe and never miss a show.
00:08:24
Speaker
While you're at it, if you found value in this episode, be sure to drop us a five-star review on iTunes and share the show with a friend to help us to continue to influence more people to create maximum impact.
00:08:35
Speaker
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00:08:55
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Tune in for next week's episode, and we'll see you then.