368: Discussing The Importance of Google Analytics - with Kate Bielinski

Meet Kate

With over twenty years of experience in marketing, Kate is passionate about helping businesses cut through complexity and ‘busy work’ to create intentional growth strategies that actually make an impact on what matters most.

In addition to running her agency, Kate also teaches students the fundamentals of marketing at Husson University and Eastern Maine Community College, is an avid adventurer, and occasionally dusts off her journalism skills as a business and travel freelance contributor.

So what exactly is happening with Google Analytics, and what does that timeline look like?

So if you own a business, or do marketing, you've probably heard about the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4. It's not anything new. Google actually released GA4 Back in 2020, they told us this was going to be happening last year, and they kind of started really poking and reminding us every time you logged in, it would say, Hey, we're transitioning to GA4. And now it is officially happening in July. So as of July, you're no longer going to have access to your Universal Analytics property. And so it's very important that businesses set up their GA4 property. So where we are in the timeline now, right around March, Google started kind of doing it for people. So you may have logged in and seen that Google has created your property for you. Some accounts may not have had it created for them yet. But it's really important that everybody kind of logs in and sees where they're at because there are some critical action steps that you want to be able to take. So come July, you're not left without the data that you need to make key decisions for your business.

So what exactly does this mean, for businesses like what should a business do?

So what it means for businesses just to kind of take a step back really quick. So Universal Analytics and GA4 are essentially different data models. So while Google does give you the option to let it migrate your Analytics account into GA4, it is advised that if you're using it for anything that's not super simple, like just tracking pageviews or sessions, kind of some of the more simple metrics, it really you should go in and make sure that you're creating your data and your reports yourself. Because Universal Analytics is mostly focused on pageviews sessions, and user interactions with individual pages on your website, whereas GA4 is a little bit more focused on events. So everything in GA4 is an event. And it's important to know how to create those events so that you have the right kind of data and know what is happening with your website.

How important is google analytics as a tool and what are some pros and cons of leveraging it as a tool?

So analytics, to me, is really the hub of how you get information if you're in digital marketing, right? It's really how you get the information and know what's happening. It allows you to see how many people are coming to your website, where they're coming from, what pages they're landing on what pages they're going to next. If you're tracking something like a lead or a purchase, you can look through behavior flow and see exactly you know what path that person is taking. And through that information that you gather, you can then make decisions not only about what you do on your website and the user experience on your website, but where to invest marketing dollars in terms of you know, are you doing PPC campaigns, are you running social media is most of your sales or most of your activity coming from your email list? It really can give you perspective on where to focus, what areas to kind of try to improve, and give you a bigger picture of How all of your marketing is working by having that all kind of plugged in together.

If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regard to your professional career?

So I have always been somebody who loves learning things I'm naturally curious. But I also have a little bit of shiny object syndrome, I guess you could call it. And I am constantly learning and reading. And while that is a very good characteristic to have. Sometimes I feel like in the past, I've almost information overloaded myself. And so now what I try to do is really be more strategic and focus on what it is that I'm trying to learn rather than kind of trying to get through 52 books in a year, you know, a book a week, I try to slow down and really then implement some of the things that I learned I really love. I think it's a Tony Robbins quote where he says knowledge is not power, knowledge is potential power. Action is power, right? So if I could tell my younger self, anything else that would be to learn but focus more on learning through experience, so you truly learn it and not just can pass up a pop quiz about it the next day.

Connect with Kate

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katebielinski/

Email Address: kate@katebielinski.com