Google Analytics has long played a critical role in online marketing efforts. Specifically, it has provided digital marketers with the ability to learn more about the customer’s journey. Through these insights, marketers have been able to make knowledgeable decisions for the benefit of business growth and overall success.
Google has a long-standing tradition of evolving intelligently. For example, its search algorithms are consistently updated to promote the best customer experience. At the same time, Google Analytics has advanced over the years for the benefit of marketers and businesses. Now, the search engine is preparing to sunset the current Google Analytics platform that has been in use for several years. The new system will be Google Analytics 4. What should you know about Google Analytics 4?
Understanding Google Analytics 4
The ability to have more robust and complete insights about customers’ activities throughout their journey is crucial, and Google has risen to meet the needs of businesses and marketers. Specifically, Google Analytics 4 expands on the capabilities of the previous solution, which is Universal Analytics. Comparatively, Google Analytics 4 enhances analytical capabilities through machine learning technology. This enables the prediction of new insights and enhances the ability to explore the customer journey across more than one device or platform. Through the advanced capabilities and functionality of Google Analytics 4, today’s marketers have the enhanced resources necessary to generate a greater return on investment for businesses’ marketing dollars.
Exciting Marketing Features in Google Analytics 4
Are you wondering what specific features set Google Analytics 4 apart from its predecessors? This is a unique analytics system that is designed to more completely meet today’s needs for digital marketing analytics. At the same time, it can keep pace with rapid changes in the ecosystem. This enables it to grow and adapt for optimized functionality. Google Analytics 4 has been intelligently designed with several new features to deliver next-level results including:
Artificial Intelligence
The predecessors to Google Analytics 4 provided the ability to extract deep insights, but some marketers found it challenging to fully optimize the power of those insights. Google Analytics 4 uses artificial intelligence to simplify access to critical insights. For example, marketers can simply ask the platform what they need to know rather than dig through data to uncover the insights.
Customer Behavior Predictions
Google Analytics 4 also allows marketers to elevate customer retention efforts. This is accomplished through improved customer behavior predictions. For example, by predicting the probability of churn at a specific point, marketing efforts can be refocused to improve retention and to decrease churn across each stage in the journey. By doing so, Google Analytics 4 empowers marketers to make more intelligent decisions and to improve businesses’ marketing efforts and results.
Visibility Inside the Customer Journey
To be successful, marketers must deliver the right content to customers at the right time. This requires them to know where customers are in their journey. Google Analytics 4 uniquely can generate lifecycle reports, which offer far more insight than behavior reports. By understanding more about the sales funnel and how customers progress through it, marketing efforts can be fine-tuned with precise accuracy.
The Benefits Offered by Google Analytics 4
The outgoing Universal Analytics has grown increasingly obsolete. For example, it relies heavily on data extracted from cookies and is largely intended for desktop web use. Google Analytics 4, on the other hand, is functional across multiple platforms. More than that, it extracts data via an event-based model rather than from cookies. By doing so, it produces a user-based measurement. At the same time, it does not store IP addresses and protects the privacy of users and businesses at a higher level. Some benefits of using Google Analytics 4 include:
1. Improved ROI
An important benefit of Google Analytics 4 is its ability to attribute credit throughout the entire customer journey rather than to the customer’s last movement. This enables marketers to better understand how their marketing efforts impact their journey and affect conversions. By doing so, Google Analytics 4 enables marketers to apply more intelligent and accurate data to Google Ads and other campaigns. The result can be an improved ROI for each marketing dollar spent.
2. Better Measurements
The enhanced privacy controls that are embedded in Google Analytics 4 enable you to manage data collection while maintaining compliance. For example, metadata and cookies can be collected based on country-level privacy controls. This important aspect of management enables optimized measurements and facilitates a better conversion rate.
3. Greater Value
Machine learning that is embedded at the heart of Google Analytics 4 provides advanced, predictive insights that elevate marketing activities. These insights may shed light on where churn is likely, user behavior throughout the journey and more. Through this specialized knowledge that may otherwise be missed, Google Analytics 4 enables marketers to dramatically improve marketing decisions and to potentially produce far better results.
4. Optimized Use of Insights
It is one thing to have access to more advanced insights, but it is another to use them in practice. Google Analytics 4 can be integrated with Google Ads and other popular Google applications. Through this integration, it is easy to optimize the power of more advanced insights across all digital marketing activities.
Learn More Today
NOVA Advertising is a Google Partner and has extensive experience with all aspects of digital marketing. From search engine optimization and online advertising to website design, your digital marketing ROI and results will be impacted by the complete approach that you take. With NOVA Advertising’s robust range of online marketing services, we provide our clients with a comprehensive approach to digital marketing that delivers measurable results. Contact the NOVA Advertising team today to learn more.