Gone are the days when just traditional marketing channels existed, only providing companies with advertising opportunities like TV commercials, radio spots, and print ads. Now, the ever-evolving digital landscape opens up far more marketing options for businesses to explore, each with targeting strategies that can be as broad or specific as necessary to reach the right audiences, guide the customer journey, and convert leads into customers.
Multichannel marketing that incorporates digital channels like search engine marketing, social media, email, geofencing, organic search, and more can create a complex marketing web that is highly effective but difficult to comb through without the right tools.
Luckily, that’s where GA4—and a team who knows how to use it—comes in.
What Is GA4?
GA4, or Google Analytics 4, is Google’s newest and most thorough analytical tool, designed to provide business owners, marketing managers, or anyone else involved in a company’s marketing with the deeper insights needed to thoroughly evaluate each channel their company relies on. Simply put, GA4 gathers and presents detailed data for each digital marketing channel you use so that you can see exactly how each one is serving your marketing efforts. It also reveals how your channels work together to drive more conversions and increase audience engagement.
Whether the only digital channel in your marketing strategy is your website or you rely on multichannel marketing that includes everything from social media ads to email marketing, you need to harness the power of GA4 to acutely understand how your strategies are working and optimize your marketing decisions.
GA4 and the Value of Its New and Improved Reporting
Because GA4 produces so much detailed data and tracks events on a much more granular level, it’s crucial to record the information in an understandable, digestible, and valuable way. While GA4 provides all the data that can be gathered from each channel you use, a skilled marketing partner with GA4 expertise can customize your report to ensure you receive information that highlights your KPIs and includes the analytics vital to increasing your marketing plan’s effectiveness.
With efficient setting adjustments and parameters in place, you can:
Advertise to Your Audience Better
Before GA4, the reporting type available—Universal Analytics—reported on audiences, but it did so with limitations. It separated ad-specific audiences and organic audiences into two, forcing you to analyze separated audience data. But with GA4, the paid and organic categories are combined so that you can analyze your audience as a whole. And within your audience, you can create sub-audiences that are as broad or specific as you’d like them to be.
For instance, let’s say you have an eCommerce website. One of your sub-audiences can include people who visited your website three times in one week, added an item to their cart on the third visit, but didn’t complete their purchase. Through analysis of this audience, you can see what their demographics are (Gender? Age? Location?) and where they are coming from (Social media? Search engines? Emails?). From there, you can use the gathered info to create hyper-targeted messaging to prompt purchase completion.
Better Evaluate Sessions, Views, Engagement Rates, Conversions, and Other KPIs
The performance-specific data available through Universal Analytics was informative, but it didn’t paint a whole picture of a user’s journey on your site or their interactions with your other marketing channels. With GA4, you gain a much better understanding of these actions and what your audiences’ journeys look like, allowing you to make adjustments and better optimize your marketing strategies and tactics to convert even more leads into customers.
For web traffic alone, the primary KPIs available through GA4 include:
Sessions
Sessions counts the total number of visits made to your website in a particular period. The total sessions count includes engaged sessions — a user is on the site for at least 10 seconds, completes a conversion event, or visits at least two additional pages — and inactive sessions.
Views
Views counts the total number of web pages seen in a particular period. The view count includes repeat views made by a single user.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions divided by the total number of sessions. This shows just how engaged users are when they land on your website.
Scroll Tracking
Scroll tracking shows how many users scroll on the page. The default setting tracks those who scroll 90% of the page, but this can be adjusted to show how many scroll 25%, 50%, 75%, or another customized percentage.
Top 10 Channels
Top 10 channels shows you the top 10 ways people reach your website, whether it be social media, search ads, display ads, email, or any other channel.
Top Channels by Conversions
Top channels by conversions shows the leading conversion paths users follow to move from lead to customer.
Top 10 Cities
Top 10 cities shows the highest traffic locations for your business or the cities that house the majority of your customers.
Top 10 Pages
Top 10 pages shows you the pages that get the most traffic and engagement on your site.
Total Conversions
Total conversions shows the total number of users who triggered a conversion event and the events they completed. Conversions can include:
- Click-to-calls
- Form submissions
- Email clicks
- “Get directions” clicks
- Downloads
Traffic by Device
Traffic by device shows the traffic to your website from desktop computers, mobile devices, and tablets. Device tracking can be general or customized down to particular brands and models of each device.
Blog Results
Blog results shows how effectively your articles drive traffic to your website. Blog results analyzes various aspects of your blog within a particular period, including:
- Total views
- Engagement rate
- Conversions
- Top 10 articles
Do I *Have* to Get Reporting on My Website and Multichannel Marketing?
While it’s not required by any means to receive reporting on your website or digital marketing efforts, bypassing GA4 reporting would be like if Michael Jordan never studied game recordings to discover his room for improvements; if Misty Copeland never practiced ballet in front of a mirror to perfect her own techniques; if Steve Jobs never evaluated the first generation of the iPhone to apply changes and create better versions.
Reporting, especially the detailed reporting provided by GA4, practically hands you a guide for the next steps in your marketing plan, filled with the numbers that show you where your focus should shift, where improvements can be made, and where you are most likely to attract new audiences and win over current leads. GA4 reporting is your opportunity to build and grow your marketing to benefit your business.
How to Get the Most Out of GA4
To gain all the value of the enhanced reporting features now available through GA4, it’s crucial to have a team that understands how to get the most out of GA4’s features and is dedicated to reviewing reports and using results to guide new optimization tactics. Reporting is key to seeing where improvements or adjustments can be made that strengthen strategies wherever needed and optimize budgets to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
At M&R Marketing, our in-house digital strategists, business development managers, and the rest of our marketing team work with you routinely to analyze your data, collect results, and talk through solutions whenever opportunities for improvement are revealed.
Are You Ready to Optimize Your Marketing Decisions With GA4 Reporting? Partner With the GA4 Experts at M&R Marketing! 478-621-4491
Our in-house team of digital experts is highly skilled at reporting on all your digital marketing channels using GA4 and reporting on the results. Plus, our web hosting services — a necessity to benefit from reporting services — are extremely secure and come with worry-free support no matter what.
Discover more about the benefits of GA4 reporting by contacting one of our business development managers today!
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