Natalie Barletta
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Articles by Natalie
IOI Insider
5 Steps To Migrate From Universal Analytics To The New GA4
Our team at IOI can definitely understand how overwhelming it is to hear that the Universal Analytics we have all grown to love is suddenly just leaving in 2023. Analytics, numbers – these tell the story behind sales and leads, so this information is absolutely crucial for you and your business to understand!
Not to worry – IOI has you covered on what to know about migrating from Universal Analytics to the new GA4.
For starters, what is GA4?
- The successor to “Universal Analytics”
- Entirely new reporting interface and tracking script
- Significantly improved machine learning for modeling & predictive analytics
- Greatly enhanced (if you don’t want to repeat)audience builder (integrated with Google Ads!)
- Custom reports (not dashboards)
- Up to 30 goals (and you can delete them)
- Privacy-first approach to tracking
GA4 offers enhanced measurements that is prompted during the setup of a GA4 property that automatically tracks:
- Scrolling
- Outbound Clicks
- Search
- Video Engagement
- File Downloads
- Create a new property
To create a new property, you will need to have account level access! Give your new property a name and select whether your stream will be populating via IOS app, Android app, or website.
- Set up data collection
In this case, we will begin setting up data collection via a website. To do this, you must add the Google tag to the <head> of the homepage. There are various ways to do this via plugin or manually.
- Activate Google Signals
This is a required step that enhances marketing and reporting. Audiences created in GA4 that are published to Google Ads can serve ads in cross-device-eligible remarketing campaigns.
- Map custom events/ migrate goals and conversions
Doing this lets you build a historical record in GA4 while still being dependent on UA until the switch.
- Migrate audiences
Migrating audiences across from your UA property to GA4 lets you identify the same user groups based on your GA4 data. This can then be exported to your linked Google Ads account to address the same use cases. You can create up to 100 audiences per GA4 property, and these audiences will automatically update everywhere rather than requiring you to select the destination. You’ll need to manually recreate these audiences in your GA4 property to migrate them.
As our industry is forever changing, IOI helps you to never skip a beat! Our digital team is not only trained on the transition to GA4, but on gaining leads and revenue from the switch. Continue on with business as usual by clicking here.
IOI Insider
How To Measure The Success of A Campaign
Six Steps To Building A Custom URL
So you want to create a campaign? Great! But what are the best practices for measuring its success? I’m going to walk you through the steps to ensure you can create a results-driven campaign.
Let’s say you have a page where you’re driving users to and promoting some type of camp or event. How do you measure the success of this URL and page you’re trying to push? How do you know where these leads come from? Most people would just copy and paste the link wherever they’re advertising it, but I want to show you there is a much more efficient and effective way of doing this.
There are two things you can do to optimize how you can measure the success of your campaign. 1) You can build a new, custom URL. 2) You can shorten your URL using a tool like Bitly or the google shortener mentioned below!
Google URL Builder
What you can do is use this tool called Google URL builder. There are 6 easy steps to create a custom URL!
Step #1: Paste the Link
This is where you copy and paste the URL of the page you want a custom URL for.
Step #2: Create Campaign Source
This will allow you to identify this particular campaign. In terms of ‘campaign source’. This is where your page’s traffic will be coming from.
Step #3: Create Campaign Medium
The ‘campaign medium’ is how your traffic got to your web page. The medium could be organic, CPC (cost per click) or referral.
Think of it as the source is where you came from and the medium is the method of transportation! (For example: source = train station, medium = train.)
Step #4: Create Campaign Term
In ‘campaign term’ you will highlight any keywords. This isn’t relevant, so out of the 5 fields you only need to fill 3 of them.
Step #5: Add Campaign Content
Then ‘campaign content’ you can use terms and put the keywords here as well.
Step #6: Add Campaign Name
Here is the ‘campaign name’. This is where you will give your campaign a name that you will be able to find in Google Analytics.
Google URL Shortener
The Google URL shortener is a great tool to shorten the URL you created. All you do is copy and paste the URL and click shorten URL! Now you can use that link for your campaign and track any campaigns in Google Analytics that you do and see which one is going to give you the best results.