The Busy Marketer's Guide to Migrating to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Because on July 1, 2023, UA is going away (i.e. will stop collecting data forever.)

So like it or not, you’ll need to make the switch to GA4 if you want to keep collecting mission-critical web data.

But if you’re like most busy marketers…

It’s just one more thing you need to squeeze in on top of all your other marketing programs.

But don’t worry – GA4 isn’t as daunting as you might think.

In fact (if you set it up right)...

GA4 is a total upgrade from UA – and can actually make your life better / easier.

So in this GA4 migration guide, we’re going to show you how to switch to GA4 as a busy, in-the-trenches marketer.

We’ll cover: 

• A simple checklist for migrating to GA4
• Key differences between GA4 vs. Universal Analytics
• How GA4 integrates with your demand gen tech stack.

How to migrate from UA to GA4, in 4 easy steps… 

By now you already know WHY you need to migrate. And WHEN. Here’s the HOW.

Your GA4 migration checklist:

Step 1: Install GA4 on your website

Step 2: Audit your current Google Analytics (UA) instance

Step 3: Configure standard event tracking for existing events

Step 4: Set up your GA4 reports

Step 1: Install GA4 on your website

GA4 won’t start collecting data until you get it set up. So let’s knock this out first.

Go to Admin >> Property >> GA4 Setup Assistant

Then, under “I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property”, select “Get Started.”

On the next screen, go ahead and select “Create Property”.

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On the next page, there should be a green indicator that says “Connected” at the top of the page.

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Last, let’s make sure it’s actually working.

Wait 30 minutes, then click “Go to your GA4 property”. Then, go Admin >> Property >> Data Streams. 

If your message says, “Receiving traffic in past 48 hours”, you’re good to go!

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Once you’re collecting data, you can decide what will survive the journey from UA to GA.

Step 2: Audit your current Google Analytics (UA) instance

Basically, you want to figure out what to keep or kill from your UA instance.

Ask questions like:

• What events and goals must we have in GA4? And which ones are outdated?
• What GA reports can we not live without? Which ones are less-than-useful for us?
• Which users should stay in our account? Which should go?

Also ask yourself… what new features of GA4 would be helpful for us to add?

This exercise helps you “cut the fat” and start with a bloat-free GA4 instance, custom-built for your marketing needs.

Step 3: Configure standard event tracking for existing events

This is the most nuanced and mission-critical step in the GA4 migration process.

For the events you decide to keep or newly-create in GA4…

It’s strongly recommended you use as many of GA4’s standard events as possible.

Because these events are universal across all GA4 properties, using them will allow you to tap into Google’s machine learning for attribution, analysis and more.

Some of the most important standard events for B2B SaaS marketers include:

• generate_lead
• sign_up
• select_content
• login
• Sign_up

Our recommendation is to create an event tracking matrix spreadsheet to map your old UA events to new GA4 standard events where possible. Then, use custom events to fill in any gaps

Finally, work with your developer to get the new events installed on your site.

Step 4: Set up your GA4 reporting

There’s two areas you’ll want to set up reporting in GA4 – “Reports” and “Explore”.

“Reports” comes with a lot of the pre-built reports you knew and loved from Universal Analytics (more of them, in fact!)

But what’s different about GA4’s reports is it slices up the data differently from UA.

For example, your “Acquisition report” allows you to splice the data by both “users” and “traffic”.

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You can also build your own tabs if you want to see a report that’s not listed by default.

Use this section to get all the reports you liked from UA, without all of the clutter.

But the Explore tool is where things really get interesting for report building in GA4…

Because it can open up any metric or dimension you want to explore for analysis (hence the name “explorations”.)

There are 6 main exploration types, but here are a few SaaS marketers will want to prioritize…

One is called “funnel exploration”, which allows you to evaluate the steps on a journey users take to take a desired action (like book a demo using Chili Piper, etc.)

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Use this exploration to find the “leaks” in your website funnel and find out how to plug ‘em.

Another one is called “cohort exploration” – this allows you to see how key segments of your users are behaving over time.

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Recently launched a key marketing initiative? A new channel? Maybe testing connected TV ads and looking for a lift?

Use this report to understand the impact.

One more great report to set up is “user lifetime”.

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Which marketing channels are driving customers with the highest lifetime value? Which ad campaigns are most likely to drive demos that convert to pipeline?

This report can help you answer these questions and more.

There are many other ways to use the Explore tool to get insights from the data. But these 3 explorations are a great start.

GA4 vs. Universal Analytics (looks different, right?)

There are some stark differences you’ll notice immediately when you fire up GA4 vs. UA.

Here are some of the big ones:

Reporting is WAY different

This is the most obvious change. Compare the old UA interface:

To the new GA4 interface:

And you’re looking at a totally different UI.

Here’s a quick rundown of the new tabs in GA4:

• Home: GA4 features your most important reports here
• Reports: This houses the pre-populated reports you’ll remember from UA
• Explore: Your go-to place for building powerful custom reports in GA4
• Advertising: This is where you can set up and manage attribution modeling
• Configure: Your developers can use this to adjust your events, goals, and audiences
• Admin: Where all of your account, property and user settings live

You’ll notice they’ve removed a lot of the out-of-the-box reports you may have previously relied on like channels, source/medium, etc.

The good news is that you now have total control over what reports show in your sidebar menu. So you only see the reports you need – plus, they’re easy to create.

“Events” are the new standard

Everything you see in GA4 is now categorized as an “event.” 

From website visits to user interactions to key conversions…

And that’s a big deal. Because each event is now far more flexible & customizable – with up to 25 custom event parameters per event.

“Goals” have also been renamed to an event type called “conversions”:

And now (just like Facebook), Google Analytics now has standard events that they recommend using. These events are key to tapping into GA4’s powerful new machine learning capabilities.

Which leads us to point #3…

Powerful machine learning is baked in

GA4’s ML is based on their “data-driven attribution” model.

Basically, it evaluates the impact of various website outcomes – then assigns weighted credit for the conversion to different channels based on these calculations.

This is powerful stuff for marketers, because it allows us to do things like:

• Predict user churn
• ID anomalies in the data (to find opps & prevent issues)
• Build audiences of our best customers

And best of all… Google helps curate these into a series of “insights” we can take action on.

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And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Getting our events organized upfront will make it easier for you to tap into these powerful capabilities.

How GA4 integrates with your demand gen tech stack

Cross-platform tracking with “data streams”

This is a HUGE feature for anyone in SaaS marketing…

Because data streams finally allow you to connect your web data with your app data in one GA4 property.

For example, suppose a customer signs up for a free trial of your software…

Then becomes a paid user via the app (or buys additional services there.)

With UA, this would have been very difficult to track.

But with the data streams feature, cross-platform tracking is built right in.

So now, not only can you measure and attribute your marketing performance across the entire customer journey in GA4…

You can also feed that full-funnel data back into your marketing to drive even better results, at the revenue level and beyond!

Some examples include:

• Optimize your Google Ads towards demos/trials that convert to paying customers
• Retarget active (paying) customers to drive cross-sells/upsells
• Identify and resolve in-app barriers to customer acquisition, retention and expansion
• Model and build audiences that resemble your highest-LTV, most engaged customers

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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To set up your data streams, go to Admin >> Property >> Data Streams, then select “Add stream” to start integrating your entire customer journey into GA4.

Cross-channel reporting & attribution

Tired of the first or last marketing touch getting all the credit?

Good news – you now have options.

GA4 has added several reporting attribution models for you to choose from.

The most exciting new model? Cross-channel, data-driven attribution.

Unlike models like first or last click, this model splits up conversions by how much each channel factored into a user’s chance of conversion. So you’ll actually see decimals in your conversions.

When you set this up well, it answers the question “what’s working?” arguably better than any model to-date.

To about this or the other attribution model, you can check out the Model Comparison subtab of “Attribution” and hover over each model to learn more about it.

You can change the attribution model at any time in the Admin panel (Data Collection >> Attribution Settings >> Reporting Attribution Model dropdown).

Native integrations

You can find these by going to Admin >> Property, then scroll down to the section called, “Product Links”.

The most exciting news for marketing ops folks…

Google Ads, BigQuery and Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) can link natively to any new GA4 property.

They integrate, great! So… what are the benefits?

1. Linking Google Ads allows you push conversion events from GA4 to your ad platform
2. Linking Google Ads allows you to push audience segments into your ad platform for remarketing initiatives.
3. Linking BigQuery allows you to store all of your historical GA4 data that exceeds the last 14 months.
4. Connecting GA4 to Looker Studio allows you to transform reporting with more customization than inside GA4

Google Analytics offers step-by-step help articles for linking existing Google Ads and BigQuery accounts.

Once your GA4 property is created, it can also be directly connected inside an existing Looker Studio report. Simply navigate to “manage datasources,” select Google Analytics, and add your Google Analytics credentials to complete the connection to Looker Studio.

Pro Tip: Product linking inside your new GA4 Property can only be completed by someone with Admin level access. So take your GA4 Admin on a coffee work date to get this knocked out. ☕

Audience builder

So you’ve got new events collecting data in a brand new GA4 property. You’re wondering — “Great… how do I use this to remarket to my users and customers?”

Luckily, GA4 makes it very easy to build just about any website audience you can imagine for analysis and retargeting. 

To get started, navigate to your GA4 property, then > Configure > Audiences > New Audience.

Audience building in GA4 is not that different from Universal Analytics. Page visitors and other events can be collected with very similar fields and conditions. 

Here’s an example of audience conditions for select web page visitors:

‍Page location

The entire URL string with parameters.

Where

Create a custom audience > Dimensions > Page/screen> Page Location

Example Audiences

Demo Request Page Visitors:

• Page location contains “/demo-request”

Product Page Visitors:

• Page location contains “/product”

Blog Visitors:

• Page location contains “/blog”

One suggestion: Segment audiences for key sections of your website in the navigation menu.

Audiences can also be created by events or specific conversion events that have been set up in your GA4 property. 

The sky's the limit with a platform running on event-focused activities. Just keep in mind that once an audience is saved, you cannot go back and make edits of any kind. (GA4 audiences are archived instead of updated.)

Conversion tracking made easy!

UA was focused on reporting at the “session” level – focused on blocks of time users were on a website. 

Default events in UA were centered on page views only… and any type of conversion action beyond that had to be custom coded. This made figuring out the “why” behind users’ actions on your website quite difficult.

Well, you’ll be happy to know that there are a host of events in GA4 that are tracked by default when the property is set up. These include: 

• Page views
• Scrolls
• Outbound clicks
• Site search
• Video engagements
• File downloads

The events reporting interface is different as well. First, it’s now easy to mark an event as a conversion. No longer hiding in the admin menu, you can now find it under the “configure” tab.

Second, whereas in UA, you could only view goals by channel or in its own report…

Events and conversions are separate columns in GA4 tables under both the reporting by channel (acquisition) and by URL (engagement).

Migrating to GA4 is just the beginning

If you’ve followed the steps in this guide… congratulations! You’ve successfully migrated to GA4.

You now have a powerful new “central source of truth” that unifies all your web & app data…

Integrates with your demand gen reporting stack…

And gives you the power to build & market to any website audience you want – with the click of a button.

But migrating from UA to GA4 is just the beginning…

Start using the incredible tools that are built-in to GA4. You’ll be amazed at what you learn and accomplish. 💪

Need help with your GA4 migration?

Chili Piper community exclusive: We'll get your GA4 migration started for you for just $50 (a $500 value.)

Reach out here and put "$50 GA4" in the details field to learn more and reserve your slot!