Practical Applications of GA 4.0 for Digital Advertising
Special Winter Pricing: Regularly $1,100 is now 50% off—$550. Enroll here.
Marketing professionals live and die by web analytics. We use that data to make marketing decisions about SEO, SEM/PPC, social media, email marketing, and all other digital marketing efforts. We also need to be able to share our data with other teams and upper management, to get buy-in from stakeholders, to champion our work, and to foster growth and success in our organizations as a whole.
With Google Analytics 4.0, Google has introduced an incredibly powerful tool for gathering and understanding web traffic data. The reporting isn’t limited to data from websites, either, but also from social media, YouTube, ad platforms, streaming services, blogs, and other online sources—everywhere you want your brand to be.
In Google Analytics 4.0, Google fundamentally rewrote their analytics tool. It has more exciting features but it works differently than GA3, its predecessor. To take full advantage of Google Analytics 4.0, you need to know how it works, where to find hidden tools, and how to use them.
This masterclass, taught by bestselling author and Google insider, Andreas Ramos, guides you through the landscape of Google Analytics 4.0. You’ll learn how to make the most of this analytical powerhouse, from installation to mastery. We also cover the new Explore tool that lets you create your own data dashboards, and you’ll get a 22-page PDF guide to the Explore tool, for convenient reference when you’re implementing it in your own work.
The course is taught with a live Google Analytics 4.0 account. Google continues to develop Google Analytics 4.0, so the course is updated for every presentation to give you the most current information, tips, insights, and techniques.
Module 1: Google Analytics 4.0 Masterclass: Installation and Configuration.
The first module includes an introduction to Google Analytics 4.0 (GA4), and its interface. You’ll learn how to install GA4, and how to create and use tracking tags in Google Tag Manager (GTM) for WordPress, Wix, and other CMS systems. We also cover how to configure the GA4 Admin panel and add and manage users.
You can follow along with your Google Analytics 4.0 account, or use a free, publicly accessible Google Analytics 4.0 account. If you need a step-by-step refresher after you complete the course, you can review the recorded video anytime.
Key Takeaways:
- Why did Google create Google Analytics 4.0 (GA4)?
- How to get access to the public version of a GA4 account.
- How to install and configure GA4.
- How to install the GA4 tracking tags in WordPress and other CMS tools with Google Tag Manager (GTM).
- How to check the GA4 and GTM tags.
- How to configure the GA4 Admin panel.
- How to add and manage users.
- How to increase data retention.
- How to use the change history.
- Filters, dashboards, views, automated reports, and alerts in GA4.
- How to understand analytics data with a bit of statistics.
- Resources for GA4: Links at Google, other sites, and ebooks.
Module 2: GA4 Reports: User Behavior, Monetization, and Events Reports.
In this module, we’ll look at preconfigured reports in GA4. Use these to learn about your visitors, how they found your website, what pages they are opening, and the devices they are using. With a better understanding of who comes to your website and how they got there, you can attract more visitors, target your audiences more accurately, create better marketing messages, and discover untapped markets. You can also export and share data with other teams so they can improve their work.
Key Takeaways:
- GA4 has 14 basic reports.
- We start with the Real Time report, which is invaluable for short-term data snapshots of minute-by-minute activity.
- The Life Cycle Section includes acquisition, engagement via events, monetization, retention, and other metrics.
- The Monetization report lets you track purchases and revenue.
- The Retention report shows your website’s “stickiness” in getting visitors to come back. You get easy-to-understand reports of Daily Active Users (DAU), Weekly Active Users (WAU), and Monthly Active Users (MAU) and how these compare to each other.
- The Users Section includes valuable demographics, such as age, gender, language, city, country, and interests.
- The Technology report tells you about your visitors’ devices, OS, browsers, screen size, app version (iOS and Android), and so on. Knowing this not only tells you valuable information about your target audience, but can also help you craft better experiences for them.
- The Advertising section includes reports on your website’s ad revenue.
- The Events report (Called “Conversions” in GA3) has been updated. It now shows all of your active events, and includes additional user actions. GA4 uses a new data model so you can track literally any action as a conversion.
- In addition, we cover the search bar, calendar, and the Insights Panel. We also cover how to use Comparison (called Segmentation in GA3). Instead of a graph with a single line for all devices, you can separate that line into different devices, such as desktop, mobile, and tablets. You can compare your traffic sources such as direct, organic, search, paid, and referral. Just by looking, you can easily spot trends, compare differences, and see which are having the most impact on your campaigns.
- A few final slides cover general issues with GA4, such as how to use UTM tags to track clicks on social media postings and social media ads, how to know when you’ll have to switch to the paid version of GA4, what happened to Google FloC, Google Topics, and how to get additional help from Google.
Module 3: Using GA4’s Explore to Build Custom Reports.
In this third workshop module, you learn how to create custom reports with the Explore tool. In contrast to GA3, which has dozens of ready-to-use reports, GA4 offers only a few basic reports and then leaves it up to you to create the others you need. Explore, a core feature of GA4, allows you to select and present your data in many formats, which is invaluable when you need to share your data with others in your organization, and gives you powerful new ways to analyze your data. Once you master it, you’ll find its flexibility indispensable.
Another major new feature of Explore is predictive analytics. Google AI uses your data to predict audiences (such as men 18-24 in California who use desktop computers, or women 25-34 in New York who use Android phones) who are likely to buy from you in the next 28 days. You can easily adjust this to capture the value that you want.
This class uses a live connection to GA4, so you can see it working in real time. You’ll get a video recording of the class, plus a 22-page handout with numbered steps that you can use to create your custom reports.
Key Takeaways:
- The Explore Tool: How to create your customized GA4 reports.
- Overview of Explore of the tools and features.
- The template gallery and the types of reports that you can use.
- An acquisition report.
- A conversion report.
- User behavior report.
- Predicted top spenders report.
- Ecommerce report.
- Gaming report.
- User lifetime report.
- How to see anomalies in your data.
- How to use Segments to create audiences in your reports. You can create just about any kind of group as a segment for further analysis and comparison.
- How to use filters to focus the data in your reports. Instead of all cities in the world, you can see only the cities in your state.
- The predictive metrics report is new in GA4. Google uses your data to predict the demographics of who will likely buy from you.
- Finally, a few notes on the future of Google Analytics.
How to Convince Your Boss Why You Should Take this Class:
Google will be sunsetting Google Analytics 3.0 sometime in 2023, they say. Your digital marketing team needs to understand the data presented in Google Analytics 4.0 and how to manipulate the reports.
With objective data, your teams can create and manage digital marketing that reaches your business goals.
Google Analytics shows you what works or doesn’t work. Use data (not guesswork, tradition, or opinions) to make marketing decisions.
The Presentations:
- The Google Analytics 4.0 workshops are hands-on and practical.
- You’ll see many examples, tips, notes, and insights so you’ll understand how to use Google Analytics 4.0.
- Workshops are live, so you can ask your questions.
- Can’t attend live workshops? No problem! All workshops are recorded. If you have questions, you’re welcome to email the instructor.
- Screenshots with step-by-step instructions in numbered lists with links.
- You can copy the examples, edit them, and use them in your work.
- Each section has handy checklists that you can use for your work.
Download Material:
- Video of the presentation with slides and audio.
- PDF of the complete presentation.
- Guide to using the Explore tool. Fifteen pages of numbered steps show you how to build your reports.
- A list of the 1,300 topics that Google uses for targeting in marketing.
Who is the course for?
This masterclass is for digital marketing managers, marketing managers, social media managers, web masters, ecommerce managers, demand generation managers, creative directors, agency account directors, and media planners in B2C and B2B companies, government, and non-profits who use Google Analytics to understand their digital marketing data.
It’s especially useful to:
- Anyone who relied on GA 3.0 before.
- Anyone who must present or share their data with other stakeholders and decision-makers in their organization.
- Anyone who manages a marketing team, agency, or consultant, whether you do the data analytics work yourself or oversee others who do it for you.
The Presenter:
Andreas Ramos
Andreas Ramos teaches courses at the DMAnc.org in digital marketing with AI, SEO, digital advertising, Google Analytics 4.0, and LinkedIn profile optimization.
- Adjunct Professor teaching university-level AI-powered digital marketing at Omnes Education, CSTU.edu, and the DMAnc.org.
- Author of 22+ books on digital marketing, including five Amazon Best Sellers. Books published by McGraw-Hill, Tsinghua University Press, and others in five languages.
- Digital marketing since 1995. Former director of the digital agency at Acxiom, where he led digital marketing projects for global banks, airlines, hotels, and more. Director of Global SEO at Cisco, where he worked in 44 languages in 84 countries. He was CMO of a Silicon Valley startup and is currently an advisor to two AI startups. His current clients include Stanford and Harvard. He has worked with Cigna, ATT, Chase, Citibank Brazil, Bain, SUN, Brio Technology, Oracle, SGI, NTT, and smaller companies.
- Keynote speaker at conferences in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, Beijing, Shanghai, Copenhagen, Vienna, Karachi, Stanford, and other cities.
- Member of the association for people who work in SEO at Silicon Valley Fortune 500s. Noted Most Valuable Contributor (2014).
- In Palo Alto since 1992.
- Master’s degree from Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
- Website is https://andreas.com (online since 1994).
- Social media: LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/in/andreasramos/ and X (formerly Twitter) https://twitter.com/Andreas_Ramos.
- Contact Andreas at [email protected].
Workshop dates and times:
WINTER
Module 1: Google Analytics 4.0 Masterclass: Installation and Configuration.
Friday, December 6, 2024
9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. PST
Module 2: GA4 Reports: User Behavior, Monetization, and Events Reports.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. PST
Module 3: Using GA4’s Explore to Build Custom Reports.
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. PST
