Greg Jarboe's presentation on "Using GA4 to Prove Value" at Paine Publishing's Measurement Base Camp on Aug. 8, 2023

1. Using GA4 to prove value
Greg Jarboe
President and co-founder, SEO-PR
Measurement Base Camp Summer 2023
Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023

2. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can help you show your
contribution to conversions and the bottom line
• Hopefully, your organization has
already switched to GA4.
• Universal Analytics should have stopped
processing data on July 1, 2023.
• This class will cover six important
things you need to lean about GA4:
• Who needs an editor’s role?
• What does Google mean by “events”?
• Where do you create micro conversions?
• When should you build PR audiences?
• Why is data-driven attribution better?
• How do you analyze GA4’s reports?

3. Who needs an editor’s role?

4. Even if someone is your organization has already
set up GA4, you still need to get an Editor’s role
• To access GA4, you need 1 of 5 roles :
• Administrator.
• Editor.
• Marketer.
• Analyst.
• Viewer.
• You want have an Editor’s role.
• If you don’t have an “Editor’s” role, then
you won’t be able to do any of the things
that I’m about to tell you.
• If you can’t get the Editor role, then you’ll
need to get someone who has that role
to do these things for you.

5. Google Merchandise Store demo account for GA4
shows real business data for an ecommerce site
Source: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/p213025502/reports/intelligenthome

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

7. What does Google mean by “events”?

8. 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 organization.

9. 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_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.
*New in GA4

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

11. Adding recommended events to your website can
help you measure additional features and behavior
Event Trigger when
join_group A user joins a group.
login A user logs in.
purchase A user completes a purchase.
search A user uses your site search.
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.
Source: https://youtu.be/PEPb3uaVILk

12. You can collect additional information for custom
events that GA4 doesn’t collect automatically
Source: https://youtu.be/QmEOPuJr05w
• You can create up to 50 custom events
that GA4 doesn’t otherwise collect
automatically or recommend.
• You can configure a custom event
using:
• The Google tag (web).
• Google Tag Manager (web).
• Firebase (apps).
• Watch this YouTube video to learn
more about custom events in GA4,
why they’re useful, and how to
configure a newsletter_signup event
on your website.

13. Where do you create micro
conversions?

14. Measurement mavens can use GA4 to show their
contribution to micro conversions on their websites
• Macro conversions measure any user
action that directly impact the success
of your organization.
• For a B2B website, submitting a lead
generation form is a macro conversion.
• Micro conversions measure key steps
to completing macro conversions.
• For example, subscribing to your free
newsletter is a micro conversion.
• In GA4, you can mark up to 30 events
as micro or macro conversions.
• You can also add a value and currency as
custom event parameters.

15. You can associate monetary values with some key
micro conversions as well as all macro conversions
• Ecommerce events already have value
and currency parameters.
• x
• 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 at a later time, and your
average transaction is $80, then you can
associate $8 (10% of $80) as the
monetary value of a newsletter sign-up
micro conversion.

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

17. Watch how to mark an event as a conversion when
someone signs up for your newsletter in GA4
• To add a value when someone has
completed a registration form:
• On the left, click Admin > Events.
• Click Create event to display 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 New value field, enter a currency
type (e.g., USD).
• Click Add modification.
• In the Parameter field, enter value.
• In the New value field, enter the value
(e.g., 500).
• Click Save.
Source: https://youtu.be/47mpnwPQ10I

18. When should you build PR
audiences?

19. 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 a PR audience using a
template in GA4.
• For example, the Acquisition template
lets you segment your users by first user
source (e.g., BW), medium (e.g., release),
campaign (e.g. launch), or default
channel group (e.g., referral).

20. 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 recently active.
• Scroll to 90% of a blog post or article.
• Play at least 50% of a product video.
• Download a white paper.
• Complete a tutorial.
• Complete a registration form.

21. If the suggested audiences don’t fit your needs,
then you can create new audiences of your own
• To create your own audiences, use the
audience builder in GA4.
• Click Admin.
• Click Audiences > New audience.
• Click Create custom audience to open the
audience builder.
• You can create a custom audience of
users who have signed up for your
newsletter.
• You can also create a custom audience
of users who haven’t signed up for
your newsletter … yet.
Source: https://youtu.be/iz-nlf1mzzs

22. You can use “audience triggers” to create PR
audiences when users cross conversion thresholds
• 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.
• This enables you to ask GA4, “What
percentage of conversions came from
recently active users?”
• For PainePublishing.com, the Percent of
Conversions for Audience ID of Recently
active users was 50.00% during the week
of April 18-24, 2023.

23. Why is data-driven attribution better?

24. 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.
• But other touchpoints have impact, too.
• An attribution model can be a rule or
a data-driven algorithm that
determines how to assign credit to
touchpoints for conversions.
• Back in April, Google announced that it
would be removing four attribution
models starting in May 2023.
Source: Danny Goodwin, Search Engine Land, “Google to sunset 4 attribution models in Ads and Analytics,” April 6, 2023

25. Click Advertising, Attribution > Conversion paths to
see early, mid, and late touchpoints by channel

26. How do you analyze GA4’s reports?

27. 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.
• The Life cycle collection helps you
understand each stage in the customer
journey — from acquisition to retention.
• If someone specifies “generate leads” or
“raise brand awareness” during setup,
then the Business objectives collection
replaces the Life cycle collection.
• The User collection helps you understand
the people who use your site, including
demographic details, the technology they
use, as well as a new audiences report,
which rolled out last week.

28. Acquisition reports provide information about the
press releases and PR campaigns that drive traffic
• Acquisition reports provide info about
where your traffic originates (e.g.,
google, press release), the channels
users arrive at your site (e.g., organic
search, referral), and the marketing
efforts you use to drive traffic (e.g.,
spring_sale, earth_day).
• You need to add campaign
parameters to URLs in your press
releases, contributed articles, and
guest posts so you can get detailed
acquisition data in GA4.

29. GA4 provides you with insights into where most,
but not all of your website’s traffic is coming from
• New research found, “A substantial
portion of social referral traffic comes
without proper, accurate referral data,
and is misclassified as ‘direct.’”
• Rand Fishkin says, “For those investing in
pro-active social media marketing, we
recommend using unique URLs to track
activity to social promotions.”
• I’ve seen direct traffic increase 35%
and organic search traffic increase
31% when Rutgers distributed 10
press releases in a quarter versus 4 in
the previous quarter.
Source: Rand Fishkin, SparkToro, “New Research: Dark Social Falsely Attributes Significant Percentages of Web Traffic as ‘Direct’,” April 27, 2023

30. Engagement reports show user engagement and
engagement time vs bounce rate and time on site
• Bounce rate was a fundamentally
flawed way to measure engagement.
• In UA, if someone visited your website,
scrolled to 90% of a blog post or article,
and then left without visiting any other
pages, then that session was a bounce
(single page impression), which looked
like an unsuccessful session.
• In GA4, user engagement and
engagement time have replaced
bounce rate and time on site.
• Engagement rate is the percentage of
sessions that last longer than 10 seconds,
have at least 2 pageviews, or have a
conversion event.

31. Monetization reports let you to show the revenue
generated by your press releases and campaigns
• GA4’s monetization reports enable
you to show the revenue generated by
your press releases and PR 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.
• You can also show the economic
value of micro conversions if you can
associate monetary values with some
key micro conversions.

32. If your business objective is to “raise brand
awareness,” then GA4 provides a relevant report
• The Pages and screens report shows
the pages on your website and the
screens on your app that people visit
and engage with.
• The report includes these metrics:
• Users.
• Views.
• Views per user.
• Average engagement time.
• Event count.
• Conversions.
• Total revenue.

33. Here are four examples of custom metrics that
measure how much you raised brand awareness
• Engaged session per user is the average number of engaged sessions per user.
• You calculate it by dividing the number of engaged sessions by total users.
• This is one of the communication standards and guidelines used by the U.S. Office of Energy
Efficiency & Renewable Energy uses in its GA4 reports.
• Average engagement time per user is the average time on a page per user.
• You calculate it by dividing total user engagement time by total users.
• Average engagement time per session is the average time on a page per session.
• You calculate it by dividing total user engagement time by sessions.
• This number will be lower than Average Engagement Time per User, because a single user
can have multiple sessions counted.
• Views per session is the average number of pageviews per session.
• You calculate it by dividing views by engaged sessions.

34. If your business objective is to “generate leads,”
then GA4 provides a relevant landing page report
• The Landing page report shows you
the first page that a visitor lands on
when they visit your website.
• This helps you identify which pages are
performing well and which ones aren’t.
• The report includes these metrics:
• Active users.
• New users.
• Sessions.
• Average engagement time per session.
• Conversions.
• Total revenue.

35. The User collection helps you to understand the
demographics of the people who use your website
• The Demographic details report
includes these key characteristics:
• Age.
• Gender.
• City.
• Country.
• Region.
• Language.
• Interests.
• Only aggregated data from users who
consent to sharing demographics data
are included in the report.

36. The new Audiences report enables you to identify
your most engaged and profitable audiences
• The report is available in the User
Attributes topic on the left in Reports.
• If you don't see the report, an
administrator or editor can add the
report through the report library.
• The report includes these metrics:
• Active users in an audience.
• New users.
• Sessions.
• Views per session.
• Average session duration.
• Total revenue.

37. Google just announced additional filters that allow
you to control what is shown in your GA4 reports
• Three new match type filters:
• Exact Matches: Filter for data that
precisely matches specific dimension
values.
• Partial Matches: Filter dimension values
using “contains,” “begins with,” or “ends
with.”
• Regular Expressions (Regex): Provide
advanced filtering capabilities.
• Here are just two examples of how
you can use the new match types:
• Finding specific landing pages: Using
“begins with” to show only landing pages
that start with “/blog.”
• Analyzing specific campaigns: Using
“contains” to view metrics for campaign
names with “GA4.”

38. Using GA4 to show your contribution to the bottom
line can really help you to get a seat at the big table
• Last week, you learned:
• How to add campaign parameters to
URLs so you can measure PR campaigns.
• Today, you’ve learned:
• Who needs an editor’s role?
• What does Google mean by “events”?
• Where do you create conversions?
• When should you build PR audiences?
• Why is data-driven attribution better?
• How do you analyze GA4’s reports?
• Once you can measure what matters,
you can get a seat at the big table.