How to use GA4 to optimize your digital marketing strategy

Knowing how to use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is necessary for marketers looking to optimize their digital campaigns. But first, you need to get some basic considerations nailed down.

When gathering information, journalists ask six classic questions:

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Why?
• How?

And you can also use this framework to figure out how to best use GA4 within your organization.

To make the most of the analytics platform, you must be able to answer at least six of the following seven questions:

• Who are our company or client’s target audiences?
• What events should we set up on our website?
• When should we measure micro conversions?
• Where do we need to customize our reports?
• Why is integrating Google Ads with GA4 the first step?
• How should B2B marketers use GA4?
• How should B2C marketers use GA4?

This article explores a framework for maximizing GA4 to improve your digital marketing strategy.

Who are our company or client’s target audiences?

Even within the same organization, “audiences” may mean different things.

The advertising team may refer to audiences for remarketing. 

SEO, social, content or digital PR teams might say that audiences refer to a segment of users from their site who have generated similar behavioral data, share demographic data, or are important to the brand in other ways.

Since these teams typically report their acquisition traffic by channel (e.g., organic search, social, or referral), they rarely segment their audiences by behavior, demographics or conversions.

However, GA4 has several suggested audiences you might want to use for segmentation. This includes users who:

• Conducted item searches.
• Started watching a video.
• Finished watching a video.
• Did not complete a tutorial.
• Completed a tutorial.
• Provided an email address.
• Are potential business leads.

GA4 lets those with Editor or Marketer roles create audience triggers when users reach key milestones like initiating X sessions, reading Y articles, or crossing Z conversion thresholds.

With these features, you can:

• Discover what different audiences are searching for and engaging with.
• Learn how users are moving through the customer journey unexpectedly.
• Explore what this means for optimizing the company’s digital marketing strategy.

Plus, if most of the traffic to your site comes from default channels like organic search, organic social, organic video, organic shopping, referral, and audio (e.g., podcast platforms), then why let advertising get all the credit for remarketing to audiences that are not “paid”? 

What events should we set up on our website?

Most events showing your contribution to the bottom line are collected automatically when you set up GA4. But they are not reported and cannot be used to create audiences until you enable enhanced measurement.

Here are seven of the automatically collected events that SEOs may want to enable for enhanced measurement:

• File_download: When a user clicks a link leading to a document, presentation, or audio file.
• Form_start: When a user interacts with a form in a session for the first time.
• Form_submit: When the user submits a form.
• Scroll: When a user reaches the bottom 90% of each page for the first time.
• Video_start: When the video starts playing.
• Video_progress: When the video progresses past 10%, 25%, 50%, and 75% duration time.
• Video_complete: When the video ends.

Once you have determined which events are worth measuring, go to Admin, click on Data Streams > Web and slide the switch On under Enhanced measurement to enable your choices.

You should also consider adding several recommended events, including:

• Generate_lead: A user submits a form to request information.
• Login: A user logs in.
• Purchase: A user completes a purchase.
• Search: A user searches for your content.
• Share: A user shares your content.
• Tutorial_begin: A user begins a tutorial.
• Tutorial_complete: A user completes a tutorial.

You can also set up custom events, but I will not even try to guess what you might want to create.

This is because GA4 uses event-based data instead of session-based data. So, now you need to measure specific interactions after users come to your site and which default channel they used to get there.

When should we measure micro conversions?

You probably know that micro conversions measure important steps to completing macro conversions. 

But executives only seem interested in macro conversions. So, setting up micro conversions was not worth it – until GA4 came along. 

In most cases, the process is as easy as going to Admin, clicking on Events, and selecting the toggle under Mark as a conversion.

For example, you might want to measure the following micro conversions:

• Scroll to 90% of a blog post or article.
• Play at least 50% of a product video.
• Complete a tutorial.
• Download a white paper.
• Complete a registration form.
• Register for a service.
• Add merchandise to the shopping cart.

If you can associate monetary values with your micro conversions, then more executives will think that they matter. 

Let’s say 10% of the people who sign up for a newsletter go on to become customers, and your average transaction is $500. Then you might associate $50 (i.e., 10% of $500) as the monetary value of a newsletter sign-up. 

To add a value when someone has completed a registration form:

• On the left, click Admin > Events.
• Click Create event to see the table of custom events.
• Click the event to modify.
• In the Parameter configuration section, click Add modification.
• In the Parameter field, enter currency.
• In the Value field, enter a currency type (e.g., USD).
• Click Add modification.
• In the Parameter field, enter the value.
• In the New value field, enter a value (e.g., 50 for $50).
• Click Save.

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