In this episode of the Marketing Smarts Live Show, Trust Insights CEO Katie Robbert digs into how GA4 differs from the previous version of Google Analytics and stresses that marketers must take immediate action.

"I really keep pushing marketers to start this process as soon as possible," says Robbert.

"Waiting until closer to the deadline is going to make it more expensive, more of a headache; and you will risk have time periods when you're not collecting data, and that's problematic."

Unfortunately, the deadline is already only a few days away now (the episode aired on YouTube in July 2022). But... now is still better than even later!

One reason Robbert recommends setting aside some time to get educated on the switch to GA4 is that so many of the metrics are different.

Bounce rate, for example, does not exist in Google Analytics 4; it's been replaced by engagement rate. Yet, the two are not directly inverse to each other, so a whole new mindset is required to interpret the data.

But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. "Use it as an excuse, an opportunity, to take a step back with all of your marketing," Robbert recommends.

"It's a really good reason to evaluate your whole Google marketing platform ecosystem. Is it set up correctly? [And] are these the KPIs we still care about?"

(Related: See Google Analytics 4 for Marketers: A MarketingProfs Master Class with Chris Penn.)

Many marketers have been frustrated with the rollout of GA4; but, Robbert insists, the platform will allow for deeper data collection and better insights.

Check out the full video for the important details:


Make sure you don't miss any future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.

Episode Details and Guest Information

Episode No. 7

Guest's social media profiles:

Full Transcript | Marketing Smarts Live Show Episode 7 | Why Google Analytics 4 Requires Your Immediate Attention

This rough transcript is machine-generated. It's been only minimally edited by humans.

George B. Thomas: All right. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and it's a beautiful day to go live. Although this live conversation, we'll get into it here in a second, it might, I fully understand, it might be a Who the Flip Moved My Cheese scenario because today we're gonna talk about why Google Analytics 4 requires your immediate attention.

And this is from an interview with Katie Robbert. Okay, we did the interview--you can go over to Marketing Smarts podcast and you can listen to this interview. But you know what, let me just get into the actual show. You're gonna find out today is a little bit different.

Hello to all of my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I'm super excited to bring you episode lucky seven of the Marketing Smarts Live Show on the topic of why Google Analytics 4 requires your immediate attention, which by the way, if this is the first time you're hearing about it, it might have actually needed your immediate attention a couple months ago.

I'm your boy, George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts YouTube live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts Podcast found on your favorite podcast app. Now, today's topic: why Google Analytics 4 requires your immediate attention. And of course, tips, tricks, hacks, and all the things that will come to my brain along this fantastic journey.

Today's show is a little bit different, but I'll explain that in a couple minutes, because first we actually have to ask you, are you part of the MarketingProfs community? That's right, mprofs.com/MPtoday, like you have to get signed up for MarketingProfs community. It's free, people.

Now let me talk about how today is a little bit different as far as how this is gonna go, and let me explain why. Usually I come on the last six shows and I do these segments. We talk about, you know, in the B2B news and we talk about community spotlight and all those different things. However, this conversation around Google Analytics 4 is so important that when I heard it on a webinar, I immediately scheduled a podcast. And when it came to this episode, I knew that I wanted to just give it to you in its entirety. So this is one of the few times you're gonna not hear me really say, Hey, go find the link, all the links.

I've trimmed it down as far as getting rid of dead spaces and things like that so that you get a nice viewable experience. I've actually broken it down in a couple sections because I'm gonna come back and unpack my thoughts

This is going to be a fun ride. Let's go ahead and get into the first section that we're going to dive into about Google Analytics 4. We're gonna hear from Katie Robbert. So Katie, I'm super excited because, you know, just to give the listeners some context, some backstory a couple weeks ago, we are on a webinar together and you were talking about Google Analytics 4, it was mind blowing. So listen listeners, here's the deal. Get the notepad, get the pencil, get the pen, get the iPad, get the rock and the wall or whatever you need to scratch down on what we're about to talk about, cuz we're gonna talk about Google Analytics 4.

And the title, I mean says the immediate attention needed around Google Analytics 4 and your business. So that's what we're gonna dive into. Katie, what would you wanna say to any marketer listening to this right now that doesn't have Google Analytics 4 in place yet?

Katie Robbert: That you're already behind the Eight Ball. The reason I say that is if you have a web analytics tracking system such as Google Analytics 3, commonly known as Universal Analytics, and you haven't already started to set up Google Analytics 4, you're gonna run into challenges around things like-year-over year comparisons.

I know that that's a big comparison that a lot of companies big or small wanna make with their data. They wanna see what happened last year, what happened this year. That's not gonna be available until you have Google Analytics 4 set up with your goals set up as well and collecting data. Now in the way in which Google analytics 4 has goals consider. It's also very different from how it's set up in Google Analytics 3.

So this is a great time to be spending with your teams to be doing new business requirements, auditing what you have, making sure that the goals that you're collecting are still the goals that are relevant, and that you're collecting them the way in which you need to be reporting on them. So if you haven't started at least gathering those requirements, again, you're already behind the eight ball.

You're already behind in time, even. You technically have until July 1st, 2023 to make the switch. You should have already been collecting data in both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I feel like this is a reboot. A restart. A relearn because it's gonna be so different from what we're used to, what we're kind of getting into.

And I wanna add in some history for the listeners of this. And I, and I think this two-part question will kind of get us there, Katie. And that is, us as marketers faced with this significant Google Analytics change, and how long, and you kind of referenced it, right? But how long do we have to actually make this change that we are faced with?

Katie Robbert: Now, in all honestly, one of the reasons why Google is rolling out Google Analytics 4, and it's so drastically different from Google Analytics 3, is because of mobile apps.

And so Google Analytics 4 Is built on the foundation of Firebase, and Firebase is the software in Google Analytics 3 that allows you to track mobile app usage. Now in Google Analytics 4, all of that is a heck of a lot more seamless, and that's one of the big reasons. The other reason is because Google has just decided to start separating out the different pieces of software in the Google marketing platform ecosystem with Google Analytics 3 Universal Analytics. You could do a lot of what you needed to do without ever really leaving Google Analytics, so you could set up your goals, you could do some lightweight reporting, you could do some attribution analysis with the built-in models.

Uh, you could email reports to people based on things that you've built in Google Analytics 4, you're being forced to use Google Analytics. And tag manager and data studio to put the complete package together. That's why it's such a big difference even just needing to use Tag Manager is in some ways a whole different skillset, especially if you're doing something like server side tagging, which is a whole episode onto itself, that probably involves your IT team and some hardcore development skills.

This is why it's significant for marketers to be getting on this now, especially if they don't wanna lose any data in terms of the time period. So if you're waiting until May of 2023 to start setting up Google Analytics 4, you may be surprised to find out it's gonna take you more than that 30 days that you, you know, have set aside or really 20 days if you take out weekends or really 10 days, if you take out your actual full-time job, a really five days, if you take out all of the other responsibilities.

And then factor in chasing people down for answers to question access to systems. All of the different things that if you start now, I feel like an infomercial. If you start now, you can alleviate a lot of those headaches. That is why I really keep pushing marketers to start this process as soon as possible.

Waiting until closer to the deadline is gonna make it more expensive, more of a headache, and you will not be having time periods where you're collecting data, and that's problematic because then you then have to answer for that to your managers and stakeholders.

George B. Thomas: Yeah and I want to dive into that a little bit deeper because as a marketer who is creating a podcast for marketers, I know other markers could literally look at the titles that I put up and go, and George is just trying to kind of bait us with this one.

But I literally put immediate attention needed because of this next question that I want to ask and give you the ability to go a little bit deeper on what we were just talking about. And that is what happened. Because by the way, sometimes in life we can be like, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know. Sure. Or we can literally be like, Eh, I'm just gonna ignore that. And it can be a no harm, no foul type.

In this one though, what happens if marketers don't know or simply ignore this change?

Katie Robbert: I feel like it's two separate questions, and so if they ignore the change, you know it's gonna be problematic and I'll get into that.

If they don't know, there are a lot of resources out there that they can start to get into. There's, you know, communities, there's Slack communities, there's documentation. So if they don't really understand why this change is such a big deal, then there's a lot of resources out there. I mean, everyone has been writing about this, talking about this, you know, giving their own opinions on this, myself included. And so there's a lot of resources that can help a market. Understand why this is a big deal.

Now, the other question of what if you simply ignore this change? Well, that's on you. That's your bad. So what happens if you, if you ignore this change goes back to those risks. And so if you're a marketer who is used to reporting to your bosses, or your clients, or your stakeholders or your board, the risk is you will not have that data and you will need to tell people as to why that data doesn't exist.

The data collection, the way that Google collects data and defines data in Universal Analytics and the way they collect and define data in Google Analytics 4, it's not apples to apples, so you have to factor in the time for that change management process as well, that education--that bringing people along for the journey. Really good example: a lot of marketers use bounce rate as a unit of measurement to determine whether or not content on their website is effective. If people are staying, if the website is sticky, bounce rate does not exist. In Google Analytics 4, Google has replaced it with a metric called engagement rate.

Engagement rate is not the inverse of bounce rate. So if in Universal Analytics you have a 10% bounce rate, that does not automatically mean that you have a 90% engagement rate. So they're not one to one. But Google has said this metric replaces [the bounce rate] metric completely. But you can't just flip them.

George B. Thomas: But you just can't flip 'em. And I love that Katie started out, boom. Are you behind the eight ball? Listen, I jotted down some notes... like have you started on this topic of Google Analytics 4, have you started or are you literally just hearing about it the first time? Or are you one of those people that we talked about in that first section about. Just kind of ignoring it because now you're literally watching this. You're hearing the words outta my mouth. You really can't ignore it. And next July, by the way, will be here. Before you know it. And I don't know about you, but when Katie started to say about 10 days equals five days, I got itchy. I think I might have started to break out in hives.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of George B. Thomas

George B. Thomas is a marketer, video Jedi, and HubSpot certified trainer with 25+ years of sales and marketing experience. George is owner and HubSpot Helper at georgebthomas.com. He has a record-breaking 38 HubSpot sales, marketing, service, CRM, and CMS certifications. George harnesses his expertise in graphic design, Web development, video editing, social media marketing, and inbound marketing to partner with, teach, and develop solutions for companies looking to develop their businesses and increase their revenue.

LinkedIn: George B. Thomas

Twitter: @GeorgeBThomas