Get Ready for the Google Analytics 4 Transition
As teams start to allocate budget for the new year, while simultaneously considering the changes with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), as well as data collection and privacy, partners are wondering what the lift is to navigate these changes. In terms of juggling the work with other initiatives, many are looking to their partners for the following benefits:
- Best practices – Have the experts guide you through the transition and help ensure you are compliant. Having a partner or third-party that works with top brands, along with Google, to optimize analytic instances and assist with compliance alleviates pressure for your teams.
- Team focus – Taking away hours each week to scale these changes internally can derail other projects.
- Resources – Many organizations simply do not have the resources to manage or roles dedicated to these specific efforts. When the consequences can be severe, timing is crucial.
GA4 360 Migration
While many partners have set up dual-tagging in GA4 for YoY comps to be collected, the real lift with GA4 is set for 2023. Digital marketers and data analytic roles have had more time to contemplate the differences and how that may affect reporting, as well as downstream systems; the C-Suite and individual business owners on the other hand are typically not as aware.
In order to ensure less friction during the transition, having a partner to help with best practices and truing up a measurement strategy to communicate to the organization at large is valuable. We’ve been working with a number of partners to help align their teams. Typically, the work encompasses the following activities:
- Review existing Universal Analytics KPIs
- Map GA4 into existing KPIs
- Identify discrepancies and employ alternative measurement
- Plan and implementation
- Execute and document
- Validate and compare Universal Analytics vs GA4
Adoption of GA4 360 after the activities listed above is the final step in transitioning. Setting up training for business owners and other stakeholders is essential in aligning on one source of truth. Making sure the differences in measurement is understood will help explain disparities and differences in reporting and help transition out from metrics that were traditionally surfaced to newer KPIs that need to be considered.
Do You Need a Partner?
Companies shouldn’t be implementing a new analytics tool, tag management system, or integrating them with an additional system like a CRM every six months, so it’s not always necessary to have someone in-house with that technical expertise. Enter a Google Marketing Platform Certified Partner like InfoTrust. A GMP Partner will work with your company to define the business requirements, create an analytics architecture that adheres to best practices and is scalable, and works closely with your development team or agency to ensure the architecture is implemented correctly.
But, at the end of the day, your company has to have a budget that lends itself to hiring outside help. Some companies tend to shy away from outside partners, which is completely fine, but this requires your in-house talent to have the knowledge and skills required for these types of projects.
There are many benefits to working with a GMP Partner for your Google Analytics in 2023. The most obvious one is that you have a team of Google Analytics experts at your disposal. They can help you define, measure, and analyze your digital properties.
If you’re interested in learning more about how InfoTrust might be able to help your organization with the transition to GA4, we’re here to help.
