 So we're going to be breaking down some changes that Google is rolling out. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my host, Beth Poptiklav. And as you know, our tagline for this show is we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. And there are some big changes rolling out at Google that is going to change the way that you report on those things. So that's what we're going to be breaking down for you all today. Do you like that little tie-in there, Beth? It's a good tie-in. Yeah, it's a great tie-in. I love it. So we're going to be breaking down some changes that Google is rolling out. So what's happening is Google is transitioning from universal analytics, which is a platform that they've been using the last few years, to GA4, Google Analytics 4, essentially what it's called. And this is changing a lot of things in reference to the type of data that Google is able to provide you, the person who's looking at reporting, whether that's on your website or through ads, whatever that might be. So Google announced in May this year that they were going to basically force all universal analytics users onto GA4. They also said that they would sunset, meaning completely get rid of universal analytics as of October 2023. So everybody has to be on there starting July 2023, and then it's going to go away completely October 2023. Today they announced that all universal analytics 360 users, so those are enterprise people who pay for a significant more amount or in more in-depth analytics reporting, they actually will be able to have analytics through 2024. They haven't officially announced that it will impact a standard universal analytics user. However, there is some anticipation that they're going to give longer longevity for how long universal analytics will be supported. Now, for our listeners, Beth, they might be listening to this and going, well, I don't really care about universal analytics versus GA4. For us, we live and breathe in these platforms because it helps us provide attribution and reporting to our clients, and it helps us understand what's happening in the marketplace. So it begs the question, well, what does this actually mean for manufacturers and for those in building product space? So we want to touch on that on a high level without getting too deep into details. So Beth, I'm going to turn that over to you to try to explain what this means in this transition to a new platform. Yeah. So if you want to tune out, let me tell you first why you shouldn't. Analytics is the one way for you to be able to show as a marketer how what you're doing online is impacting sales. And if you feel like your website can't do that, it's probably because analytics is not properly set up. So if you have analytics tracking set up on your website, you're able to see what's being clicked, what's being downloaded, the paths that people take when they come in from your home page, how they get to product pages, where they leave, why they leave, where they get stuck, all of that great information. What's the most downloaded high value resource that you have? What's the least downloaded or least converting asset that you have that you really wish people were accessing more? It can give such incredible insight. And so that's why this announcement was such a big deal is because marketers, us included, spend tons and tons of time investing in getting all of these things, these custom tracking experiences set up properly to be able to give really in depth reporting that can help you make and that can help give you really strong insight into what's working and what's not and how to fix it. So all of that being said, the main reason that GA4 is going to become the new dominant analytics suite is because it was developed directly in response to the shifts in privacy policies. So GA4 holds and hosts and gathers content in a very different content to the wrong word. GA4 gathers data about a person or a user on your website in a very different way than universal analytics. And we're not going to bother to get into the weeds, but it is important to note that number one, as we said at the top of the show, universal analytics is going away. So if you have a website, this matters to you. And number two, if you are in California concerned about GDPR or other privacy policy compliance issues, GA4 is going to be a significant resource in helping with that. If you were to stay on universal analytics and try to be privacy policy compliant, you actually have to have an entire human dedicated to how and where you house that user data and GA4 helps solve for that. So I think the other thing here too that to make note of is that when we look at Google analytics, it's helpful to look at, Hey, what is what is a user doing on a site? Let's track those individual sessions. Let's track those individual users and what they're doing on a given web session. The way that the story that we're able to tell is actually going to have to change. What I mean there is that we are used to being able to look at analytics on a session by session basis and Google is trying to move to a more, I want to actually make sure I use the right word here. They're, they're, the word they use is they're moving to a flexible event based data model, which I'm going to try not to talk too far out of my depth here, but essentially what that means is that previously you had session based modeling data track with me. What this means is that a person comes to the site or your website, they click around, that is a single session. They're now trying to do more broad based flexible approach to saying this is what is trending across the board because what they're moving into is automation right now within the existing UA platform, universal analytics, which is what most everyone has, there's a limited automation around what can you do with the data? They're trying to roll out more machine learning throughout their platform to give better insights and simplify insight discovery is what they say. Now that's what they say and you're like, oh, well, that sounds great. Who wouldn't want that? Beth, would you want those great? Yeah, totally want this. Yeah, how nice of them. And just for context, for most of our clients, we've transitioned to rolling out GA4 alongside of UA and we're going to get to why we're doing this, from why we recommend you do it as well. The thing here that's different is that we're so used to being able to look very, very granular on a site. Let's look at session by session, see what people do, how do they arrive here? It's very, like I said, microscopic, you can get really, really far into the weeds. They're trying to move away from that. And it's I think, because they're trying to also provide more privacy protection for the user. So they are pulling back the level of insight and data that they provide you on the name of privacy and automation and things like that. So it's going to be harder to provide really what it comes down to is going to be harder for you to attribute specific actions on the front end of a user and directly measure that on the back end of your analytics. Okay, so if I'm a manufacturer or marketer listening to you, Zach, I actually kind of feel like I just got the wind out of taking out of my sales of like, wait, I'm going to get even less insights. Like in this industry where it's so difficult to get true insights into closely reporting how my spec documentation downloads, ends up in the spec, doesn't get flipped, actually gets purchased, actually gets installed, like the amount of hands that products pass through in our industry is not insignificant. So if you're hearing that you're going to get less transparency, it's not inaccurate. We're actually going to be able to get in the next couple of years predictive analytics. So you would be able to test in an environment that didn't actually get launched on your site, what would happen would conversions go up or down based on changes that you suggest being made on your site because Google is introducing machine learning into your analytics and not just basing it on human interaction. So right now if we test and learn something, we created something, we put it out there, we test it for a little while, we gather the data, we make a decision. What this is going to allow us to do is do that basically in a test environment and get real time machine learning feedback and understand is this going to work or not before I ever watch it. Which sounds great, right? So when we talk about, you know, what's happening in GA, why are they doing this? Google is doing this because they want to provide more privacy and they want to push their platform further. I'm going to date myself here. I remember back when Google used to report the keywords that people searched organically, the good old days, the good old days, and like they're now printing back. And so there's two or three things that we're going to recommend to manufacturers or frankly anybody that's listening to this episode in reference to tracking analytics. The first thing is, and this is, we've already told you that this is something we've done is we recommend you set up a new instance of analytics specifically in GA four, but keep your universal analytics in place. So basically keep your existing analytics, but roll out a new instance of your same website using GA four. And the reason being the reason why you need to do that is for the point that Beth just made is that you need to begin to harvest historical data for GA four because of how they track and measure data. They look at it through a lens of, Hey, let's graft a bunch of data. And then we're going to report based upon that, not to mention that historical data component that Beth mentioned, because they're going to be sunsetting universal analytics. You don't want to ride into universal, excuse me, GA four with no historical data on GA four. It's going to really hurt your ability to provide reporting, all of those different things. So step one is if you haven't transitioned and set up a new instance, go ahead and do that. Second thing there is begin to try to set up reporting within GA four separate separately from universal analytics. This is really important because you need to begin to train your team on how to use GA four as a reporting tool in comparison to UA. It's going to feel difficult or different, maybe not difficult, but it'll feel different. And it's better to do that now and start that process internally within your marketing departments. And the third thing, which we haven't really talked about that you need to be doing is looking at self-reported attribution. This is something that we are really, really big on at Venvio. Self-reported attribution is a fancy way of saying getting your users to tell you how they found you, what did they do before they actually converted? So for example, I go to the internet, I go to Google, I search for some things. Let's say I'm searching for metal roofing or I'm searching for installation or something like that. I look around a couple different websites. I then ask some friends who are well versed in the space and then I go to a manufacturer's website and become a lead. Google is going to tell me, hey, well that lead came to you from Google because they searched for something and they clicked on a link and there they are. But the reality is that there's so many other touch points involved in that journey to get me to become a lead than what Google is telling you. So self-reported attribution, it's really simple. On a form asking a user to say, hey, how did you find out about us? Getting that information and then reporting on that gives you a much better picture of what your user base, what your audience is doing to get them to become a lead. It also is a great way to be able to understand where do I invest more, what's working, what resonated. You'll get feedback about the types of messages, the types of mediums. It's just an excellent, excellent way to take that attribution one step further, especially as we go into shifting and privacy policies and cookie blocking and all of that stuff. It's an excellent thing to get set up now. I think that's a great idea, Zach. Well, the other thing here too, and what we're really, I think what we're going, Beth, is long term, the ability for us to use these third party platforms as reporting tools, is it going to become more and more difficult. So manufacturers begin to integrate their own tracking and analytics and ways of getting data is going to become necessary for them to continue to compete and understand what actually moves the needle for their audience. So for example, this podcast, we know this podcast is very, very helpful to our clients and prospective clients. It's very hard to track, Hey, did somebody listen to an episode? And then did they be, you know, reach out to us? Like there isn't a Google analytics feature for that. But we do a lot of, you know, self-report attribution. We understand, Hey, if someone listened to this episode, they share with us, this is really interesting. And then they provide that information to us. The same manufacturer should be doing the same exact thing. Oh, I saw you at a trade show. Oh, I listened to you on this webinar. I saw one of your ads. Like those are things that you should be asking your users and asking your leads for to make sure that you're getting a better picture of what's actually working within your marketing. Before we let everyone go Zach, I want to give one more pro tip about the switch from GA4 to universal analytics. And that is you've heard us mention a couple of times that Google has said they are going to sunset universal analytics. What that means is they are going to literally delete your universal analytics account. It's not like they're not just going to support it. It is going to go by by. So what that means is you need to take the extra step of pulling some historical data and keeping that to the side so that you have it to access. You can build it into a Google data student. You can build it into a Google studio dashboard. You can put it onto a separate dashboard platform. There's actually a good number of third parties that will help you do that in a pretty efficient manner. But if you want to be able to look at historical data because you're going to lose that when you move into GA4, that was something that we would really highly recommend so that when your universal analytics instance gets deleted, you're not just caught off guard and you wish that you could go back and see what was our traffic like in 2021. And it was wonky and crazy because it's been wonky and crazy for a couple of years now, but still a good reference point, still a good baseline. So just wanted to make sure we mentioned that. Yeah. And if you're looking for someone to help you with that too, I mean, that's why we're here as well. So if you need help with your transition or you need help with anything we talked about, feel free to reach out to us at Venvio.com. And again, we hope you enjoyed this episode. You found it helpful. And if you want more great content like this, check us out at Venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams, alongside that lovely glove. Thanks, everybody.