Google Analytics (GA4) Setups, Reporting, Analysis, and Planning

Any business with a website or app needs to have Google Analytics (GA4) set up. Tracking your marketing efforts is vital to your business’s success. By doing so, you discover what’s working and not working. Ideally, this should be a monthly task. Obviously, if you’re running special campaigns, you can check them more often. As The AZ Social Media Wiz, with over 30 years of digital marketing experience and over 14 years of working in social media, content, and SEO marketing, I use my expertise to help you grow your business.

Turning Your Website Data Into Marketing You Can Actually Trust

Right now, you may have some data like a Google Analytics account, maybe a few ad campaigns running. But if you can’t say for certain which of your marketing dollars are actually bringing in customers (ROI), you’re not alone. Most small business owners are flying on gut feelings because their tracking was never properly set up to answer that question in the first place.

Or, you may not even have Google Analytics set up and monitoring your website. If you are serious about growing your business, if you want to increase conversions, you cannot afford to neglect Google Analytics!

OR if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. We all know the definition of insanity. Then why are you doing social media, content marketing, and paid ads without checking your analytics and insights?

Step 1: Getting the lens in focus.

1. Defining Your Goals and Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish? (Setting SMART Goals)
   • Generate leads?
   • Get the phone to ring?
   • Sell products?
   • Book calls or services?
2. Validate Your Google Tag Manager (GTM): to ensure it’s collecting data from your site. Before we can tell you anything useful, we need to make sure what we’re measuring is accurate. Most GA4 accounts we inherit are tracking the wrong things, or nothing at all. So, this month is about getting the wiring right.
   • Clean setup, top to bottom. I install a properly configured Google Tag Manager container, set up your GA4 property the right way, and lock down user access and privacy settings so your data stays clean and compliant.
   • Tracking what actually matters. Instead of drowning you in vanity metrics, I translate your real business goals- more calls, more form fills, and/or more sales- into specific actions we track on your site, then mark those as conversions in GA4.
   • Connecting the dots. If you’re running ads, you’re in Tier 2, which requires a more complex setup. See below…
3. Analyzing Your Current Efforts: If you’ve been blogging and posting regularly on social media, we can review your efforts to answer these questions and more…
   • Why is my website getting traffic but nobody is calling or filling out forms? There’s something wrong with your website. Either it’s too confusing, the call-to-action isn’t visible, or something is turning them off.
   • Which landing pages generate valuable inquiries? Tracking visitor journeys through your website helps you improve the user experience (UX), which, in turn, increases conversions.
   • Where are your visitors coming from, and how does that affect your social media and content strategies and tactics? Are you posting in the right social networks to reach your intended target market(s)?
   • Which product or service pages need improvement? You may THINK they look good, but are they really optimized?
   • Are the top pages attracting the wrong type of visitor? In other words, they are just reading useful content, but they wouldn’t become a client. They aren’t a quality lead.
   • Note: If you don’t have Google Analytics set up, we can view your social media insights and analytics to see how effective your posts have been
4. Data-based Answers to those Questions. Data doesn’t lie. You might THINK it’s working, but the data may tell you otherwise.
5. Understanding Metics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), ROI & ROAS (if doing paid ads), conversions, and events (what people do on your site).
6. Google Search Console Report: This is all about how you appear on the Google Search Results Page (SERP). NEW! GA4 can now track how often you come up in AI Overviews and AI Mode. However, you need to turn the feature on.
   • What keywords or phrases is your site coming up for?
   • What position do you show up on the SERP?
   • What is your click-through rate compared to the industry average?
7. AZ Social Media Wiz will take your analytics and turn them into strategic and tactical marketing plans that you can implement right away.
8. We hold a monthly 30-minute coaching call to review the reports and determine the next steps.

What you walk away with:

At this point, you have a fully validated GA4 tracking setup, plus your Initial 1-month Strategic and Tactical Marketing Plan: a roadmap for where we’ll focus first based on your goals and initial analysis. Now you have 2 choices:

Not sure of which way to go? Let’s talk! Book a FREE Discovery Call.

How much does a professional GA4 setup cost?

It depends on your business type, website size, marketing efforts, and what you want to accomplish.

Google Analytics Service Tier Pricing

• Tier 1: For a very basic website with simple calls-to-action:
  • Initial Setup $75: (one-time fee). If you don’t have GA4 set up, this includes setting up a GA4 account and connecting your website. Depending on your platform, we might have to do this together. This is a one-time fee. Includes:
    • SMART goal Setting
    • Determining which metrics matter to you the most.
    • Set up of reports to monitor that data from your website.
  • Simple Audit and Basic Report Setup – $75 (one-time fee). If you have GA4 set up and connected, I test to see that Google Tag Manager is installed properly and is actively connecting data. This is a one-time fee that includes a basic report with data-based recommendations. Setting up conversion key event tracking based on your SMART goals.
  • SEO Website Tweaks $75/hr: Data-based improvements to the website pages, like updating meta descriptions and SEO titles. 
  • 1 30-minute call to review the report and go over the marketing suggestions.
  • Note: A larger website may incur additional costs. And once you start doing paid ads, you move to Tier 2…
• Tier 2: You’re Doing Google and/or Facebook Ads – $275: This includes all the services listed in Tier 1 plus:
  • Connecting the dots. If you’re running ads, I link GA4 directly to Google, YouTube, Instagram, and/or Facebook Ads, so your ad platform and your website data are finally talking to each other and sharing audience insights.
  • GA4 is not the Whole Measurement System. As AZ Social Media Wiz, I know that social media plays a major role when it comes to being noticed by the AI answer bots. ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Claude all grab content from the whole World Wide Web. Therefore, tracking your social media through GA4 helps us get the bigger picture of how effective your content marketing is.
• Tier 3: Ecommerce: Whether on WooCommerce, Shopify, Etsy, or another platform, ecommerce tracking is significantly more complex than standard lead-generation or Google Ads tracking. Because a single order contains multiple separate products, the system nests a mini-list (the “item array”) inside the main order data. Tools like Google Analytics E-commerce tracking require you to send an “items array” so they can track exactly which products are driving the most revenue. In other words, on an e-commerce website, “nested data structures (item arrays)” refers to the list of products inside a customer’s shopping cart or order history.
  • Because of its complexity, this requires a more formal quote, taking into consideration how many products there are and the volume of business that you do. If you’re interested, please fill out this form.

Note: These are new services that I’ll be providing. If you’re interested, please book a FREE Discovery Session.

What Does Google Analytics Reporting Tell You?

All of these tell you what’s working and what’s not working. Thus, if what you’re doing is not reaching your target, not bringing in the leads, not accomplishing what you need it to, then you need to adjust your marketing plan accordingly.

You do have a marketing plan, right?

If you don’t have a plan, I can provide a list of data-based ideas on the types of content you create and where to post it to improve your results.

What if what we’re doing is working?

Fantastic! Then keep doing what you’re doing! However, you should vary your messages to not become stale. Keep creating the content that’s drawing people in. Naturally, you need to keep checking your analytics to improve results. You can always improve results.

AZ Social Media Wiz Google Analytics(GA4) Services FAQs

Giselle Aguiar Digital Marketing Strategist,

Giselle Aguiar is a social media, inbound and content marketing strategist and trainer helping business owners learn how to leverage the power of social media marketing, increase traffic to their websites, generate leads, increase brand awareness and establish themselves as experts in their fields.

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