Greg Jarboe's presentation, "Using GA 4 to show attribution and value," at Paine Publishing's Measurement Base Camp on Jan. 31, 2023

1. Using GA 4 to show attribution and value
Greg Jarboe
President and co-founder, SEO-PR
Measurement Base Camp Winter 2023
Tuesday, January 31, 2023

2. A PRSA member asked a question that illustrates
why attribution and value can be hard to measure
Hello! My team is trying to provide an at-a-glance number for our leadership team
that combines audiences across channels and measures their quality in some way.
I have read online about calculating an Audience Quality Score for influencers, but
we are interested in finding a way to maybe create some kind of 'score' or high-level
number that showcases the quality of our organic impressions (vs paid impressions).
Is there a way to take statistics like average session duration, bounce/exit rate, and
pages/session and turn them into a more high-level number of our audience
engaging with our content? Interested in hearing your insights!

3. Create PR audiences

4. Audiences in GA4 let you segment your users in the
whatever ways are important to your organization
• An audience is a group of users who
have generated similar behavioral
data or who share demographic or
other descriptive data.
• For example, they were acquired by the
same PR campaign.
• You can create an audience using a
template in GA4.
• For example, the Demographics template
includes the Age, Gender, Language, and
Location dimensions that you can use to
define the target audience in which
you’re interested.

5. You can use the “suggested audiences” that are
relevant to your industry to create PR audiences
• You can also use suggested audiences.
• When you create a GA4 property, you
specify the industry category for your
business or organization.
• GA4 will then display a number of
preconfigured suggested audiences that
you can use based on the recommended
events for those categories.
• Depending on your industry, a PR
audience could include users who:
• Are potential business leads.
• Completed a tutorial.
• Completed watching a video.
• Registered with your business (e.g., by
providing an email address).
• Viewed specific items.

6. You can use “audience triggers” when users cross
conversion thresholds to create PR audiences
• You can create up to 20 audience-
trigger events.
• For example, you can trigger events when
users reach key milestones, like initiating
a certain number of sessions or reading a
certain number of articles.
• You can also trigger events for
crossing conversion thresholds.
• For example, if the condition for being in
your audience, “high-value customers”, is
defined as users whose lifetime value is
greater than 100, then each time a user
meets that condition and becomes an
audience member, it would trigger a
conversion event.

7. You can even create PR audiences for “likely 7-day
purchasers” and “predicted 28-day top spenders”
• PR and communications professionals can even create “predictive audiences”.
• For example, you could build a PR audience for “likely 7-day purchasers” that includes users
who are likely to make a purchase in the next 7 days.
• You could build a PR audience for “predicted 28-day top spenders” that includes users who
are predicted to generate the most revenue in the next 28 days.
• How do PR and communications professionals use predictive audiences?
• Users who are on the threshold of converting are more easily convinced to complete those
conversions.
• For example, users who have studied product details or added items to their carts have given
strong signals that they’re already taking ownership of those products.
• A persuasive follow-up from you via a well-crafted remarketing campaign can provide that
last nudge they need to complete the process.
• And PR’s predictive audiences can be automatically shared by linking GA4 with Google Ads.

8. Different kinds of organizations can benefit from
using GA4, but there is ‘some assembly required’
• GA4 provides different benefits to
kinds of organizations:
• Businesses can use GA4 to understand
customers’ online purchasing behavior.
• Publishers can use GA4 to create a loyal,
highly engaged audience.
• Universities can use GA4 to connect user
information with applications.
• Nonprofits can use GA4 to better align
on-site content with user interests.
• So, “one size does not fit all.”
• This means you need to customize GA4 to
meet the needs of your organization.

9. Set up GA4

10. Don’t wait until July 1, 2023; now is the time for PR
and communications professionals to set up GA4
• On July 1, 2023, the current version of
Universal Analytics (UA) will sunset.
• If you haven’t set up Google Analytics 4
(GA4) yet, then now is the time to do it.
• Google’s machine learning models need
up to 32 weeks to analyze your data
before predicting future actions end-
users may take.
• If your company or client has already
set up GA4, then get an Editor role.
• There are 4 roles: Administrator, Editor,
Analyst, and Viewer.
• Insist on having an Editor role.

11. There are three different ways to get started with
GA4 – if you have an editor or administrator’s role
• Set up Analytics for the first time.
• Do this if you’re new to Digital Analytics,
but ready to start collecting data for your
website.
• Add GA4 to a site with UA.
• Use the Setup Assistant to add GA4
alongside your existing UA property,
which will continue to collect data until
June 30, 2023.
• Add GA4 to a content management
system (CMS).
• Do this if you use a CMS-hosted website
was created using Wix, WordPress,
Drupal, Squarespace, GoDaddy,
WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento,
Awesome Motive, or HubSpot.

12. And the Google Merchandise Store demo account
is a great way to look at real business data in GA4
Source: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/p213025502/reports/intelligenthome

13. Click Admin, Data Settings, Data Retention to reset
user and event data retention from 2 to 14 months

14. Configure events

15. In GA4, an ‘event’ allows you to measure a distinct
user interaction on your organization’s website
• The following types of events are
collected automatically:
• Automatically collected events are basic
interactions with your site and/or app.
• Enhanced measurement events are
measured only if they are enabled.
• The following types of events require
some implementation to see them:
• Recommended events help you measure
additional features and behavior as well
as generate more useful reports.
• Custom events collect information that’s
specific to your business.

16. Automatically collected events are triggered by
basic interactions with your website and/or app
Event Automatically triggered
Click Each time a user clicks a link that leads away from the current domain.
File_download When a user clicks a link leading to a document, text, presentation, video, or audio file.
First_visit The first time a user visits a website.
Form_start The first time a user interacts with a form in a session.
Form_submit When the user submits a form.
Page_view Each time the page loads or the browser history state is changed by the active site.
Scroll The first time a user reaches the bottom 90% of each page.
Session_start When a user engages the website.
Video_complete When the video ends.
Video_progress When the video progresses past 10%, 25%, 50%, and 75% duration time.
Video_start When the video starts playing.

17. Click Admin; click Data Streams > Web; then slide
the switch On for enhanced measurement events

18. Adding recommended events to your website can
help you measure additional features and behavior
Event Trigger when
Generate_lead A user submits a form or a request for
information.
Join_group A user joins a group.
Login A user logs in.
Purchase A user completes a purchase.
Search A user searches your content.
Select_content A user selects content.
Share A user shares content.
Sign_up A user signs up.
Tutorial_begin A user begins a tutorial.
Tutorial_complete A user completes a tutorial.
• Adding these events to your website
or mobile app helps you measure
additional features and behavior as
well as generate more useful reports.
• Because these events require
additional context to be meaningful,
they're not sent automatically.
• Watch a step-by-step video entitled,
“Measure user activity with
recommended events in Google
Analytics,” to see how to set up a
recommended event on your website
using Google Tag Manager.

19. Mark conversions

20. In GA4, communications professionals can show
their contribution to their company’s bottom line
• A conversion is any user action that’s
valuable to your business.
• For example, a user purchasing from your
site or subscribing to your newsletter.
• To measure conversions, you simply
mark up to 30 events as conversions.
• You must have the Editor (or above) role
to manage conversions in GA4.
• Marking an event as a conversion
affects reports after its creation.
• It does not change historic data.
• Allow up to 24 hours for it to show up in
standard reports.

21. Go to Configure > Events. In the Existing events
table, select the toggle under Mark as conversion

22. By setting up conversions, you can attribute credit
and report on your contribution to the bottom line
• Attribute credit to conversions:
Understand the touch points along a
user’s path to conversion.
• Advertise to unconverted users: Use
your conversion data to create
audiences of users who didn’t convert
and import those audiences into
Google Ads for remarketing.
• Report on conversions: See the
actions that matter most to your
business using the Acquisition,
Engagement, and Advertising reports.

23. You can associate monetary values with some key
micro conversions as well as all macro conversions
• Ecommerce events already have value
and currency parameters.
• You can add the same parameters to
any other conversion event.
• For example, if 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 micro conversion.
• Just calculate the Economic Value of a
micro conversion based on how often the
people who take this important action go
on to become customers at a later time.

24. Compare attribution models

25. Attribution modeling in GA4 provides deeper
insights and more actionability than ever before
• Users may visit your website several
times before making a purchase or
completing another valuable action.
• Typically, all the credit for the conversion
was given to the last click.
• So, how do you measure the impact that
all the other touchpoints had?
• An attribution model can be a rule or
a data-driven algorithm that
determines how to assign credit to
touchpoints for conversions.
• You need to know how factors work
together on the path to conversions.

26. GA4 gives you the option of using a data-driven
attribution model powered by machine learning

27. Click Advertising, Attribution > Model comparison
to compare the last click and data-driven models

28. Click Conversion paths to see why this ecommerce
site’s last click and data-driven models are similar

29. Analyze life cycle reports

30. GA4 provides several default reports for common
use cases, but you can also customize your reports
• In GA4, you will see a number of
predefined reports.
• Everyone with access to your
organization’s GA4 account will see
the same set of reports on the left.
• This means that the expiration date
on bogus metrics and vanity metrics
is July 1, 2023.
• So, we need to fully understand
what’s in these reports.
• And we should learn how to
customize them, if necessary.

31. Acquisition reports provide information about the
press releases and PR campaigns that drive traffic
• The Acquisition reports provide
information about where your traffic
originates (e.g., google, press release),
the methods by which users arrive at
your site (e.g., cpc, PR), and the
marketing efforts you use to drive
traffic (e.g., spring_sale, campaign).
• You need to manually tag the
destination URLs with UTM
parameters in your press releases,
contributed articles, and social media
posts to get this detailed acquisition
data in GA4.

32. Engagement reports show user engagement and
engagement time vs bounce rate and time on site
• In GA4, user engagement and
engagement time have replaced
bounce rate and time on site.
• If you are publishing articles or blog
posts on the site, then engagement
reports can help you see if these
pages have the highest average
engagement time or event count.
• Analyzing your best and worst articles
or posts can help you uncover the
best and worst topics or types of
content going forward.

33. GA4 has rolled out built-in functionality that allows
you to generate customized landing page reports
• You can find the landing page report
in the Engagement section of the left
navigation in your GA4 dashboard.
• The default, automated report includes
metrics for views, new users, average
engagement time per session,
conversions, and total revenue.
• But these fields can be changed and
customized to meet your needs.
• Creating custom reports is a fairly
straightforward process:
• Click the “customize report” icon (pencil)
in the upper right corner.
• Click “metrics” and add or remove the
ones you want in your report.
• Hit “apply” and generate your report.

34. Monetization reports let you to show the revenue
generated by your press releases and campaigns
• I’ve been doing this for 20 years.
• But my agency had to jury-rig ways to
show our contribution to the bottom line
of a wide variety of clients.
• GA4’s monetization reports enable
you to show the revenue generated by
your press releases and campaigns.
• For example, the campaigns named
Nov2022_Holiday_V1 or V2 generated
137 purchases of 714 items for a total of
$14,184.30 in revenue.
• The Chrome Dino Camp Shirt was the
item that generated the most revenue.

35. Retention reports show Lifetime value, the average
revenue from new users over their first 120 days
• The Lifetime Value (LTV) chart is a
misnomer because it only illustrates
the average revenue from new users
over their first 120 days.
• But you can use the chart to determine
how valuable users are based on the
revenue they generate in that time.
• For example, let’s say a user initially
purchases a shirt and then purchases
pants the following week.
• The lifetime value (LTV) will include both
purchases, indicating the overall success
of the acquisition.

36. We are offering a GA 4 for PR & Communications
course on Zoom that starts on Wednesday, April 5
• On April 12, you’ll learn how to:
o Measure brand lift.
o Collect campaign data.
o Set up GA4.
o Configure events.
o Mark conversions.
• April 19, you’ll learn how to:
o Compare attribution models.
o Analyze life cycle reports.
o Explore deeper insights.
o Act on Analytics Intelligence.
o Create PR audiences.