With so much to do and limited resources to do them with, it’s imperative that tech startups have systems for organization and measurement that keep track of marketing goals.
One of the smartest tools startups should employ is the new Google Analytics 4.
An overhaul of Google Analytics, GA4 will offer granular insights into the performance of your marketing, content, products and more. It reveals user behavior as they interact with your site or app and gives insight in how to optimise your customer journey.
Why is Google Analytics a must for tech startups?
The GA4 update was summarised by Google in the following quote:
“The overall benefit of GA4 is that it provides a better representation of user behavior, while allowing you to spend less time collecting and aggregating data.”
For a startup beginning to navigate an increasingly complex digital space, this potential for better user understanding and efficiency of reporting is going to make a big difference to the fragile bottom line. From creating the perfect customer journey to gathering insight that can be fed back into products and services, here are some of the ways start-ups can harness the power of GA4:
Feature: AI-powered Insights and predictions
Why it’s useful: Although machine learning powered insights were also a feature of the previous GA, the GA4 iteration is able to highlight data trends, such as increasing demand for a product or service, and predict outcomes that can be far more specific. For example, the potential revenue a business could earn from a particular segment of customers. Startups can benefit from this ability to anticipate the future actions of customers, since it will allow them to focus their efforts (and resources) on higher-value audiences.
Feature: Deeper audience integration with Google Ads
Why it’s useful: This integration with Google Ads means tech startups will be able to follow the visitors on their website and app and automatically delete a user from an audience once they’ve successfully completed a purchase, reducing unnecessary ad spend.
Feature: Customer lifecycle-framed reporting
Why this is useful: Startups can use GA4 to drill well down into particular aspects of the customer journey and better understand why users do what they do. The way in which reports are organized is one of the biggest differences between GA4 and Universal Analytics. With GA4, a more complete overview of the way customers are engaging with a business, across devices and channels, means more accurate reporting and targeting.
Feature: Conversion tracking
Why it’s useful: Startups benefit from configuring goals for the actions that reflect the top-level objectives for their website or app, whether that’s email subscriptions, appointments scheduled or direct sales. GA4 supports this through their conversion tracking, what in Universal analytics was previously called ‘Goals’. GA4’s more evolved version goes into far more depth.
Feature: Using AI to fill data gaps
Why this is useful: As third-party cookies continue to be phased out, it’s expected that sparse data will become the norm. GA4’s machine learning can be used to fill the gaps, giving start-ups better insights and increased reporting accuracy.
Feature: More granular data control
Why this is useful: Tracking from across owned platforms (website and app) allows for a more holistic view of customer interaction with owned channels. All the data is then stored in a single place, already consolidated and merged. Free BigQuery exports allow this data to be analyzed deeply and linked to offline data sources. For example, CRM, store sales, customer phone calls, etc. This creates lots of opportunities for technical teams to get more value from their analytics data.
Conclusion
With new features and greater practical applications, GA4 intelligent approach promises to offer a more complete understanding of the user journey across devices, instead of focusing only on individual, fragmented metrics.
With the dwindling stability of traditional analytics and new privacy laws (such as GDPR and CCPA), GA4 promises to be a more “future-proof” solution for tech startups looking to make the most of their data.
Ben Myall is CEO of Three Whiskey Inc, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Dallas and London. Three Whiskey specializes in digital marketing planning, execution and measurement on behalf of enterprise clients with operations around the world.