INBOX INSIGHTS: Google Analytics 4, Fortune 1000 Marketing Technology (3/23) :: 
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News About Google Analytics
In case you missed it, Google announced last week that it will be sunsetting Google Analytics Universal (or Google Analytics 3) in July of 2023. The data that you’ve collected will only be available to you for six months after that.
Why? Google rolled out Google Analytics 4 last year and is now making a push for everyone to start adopting the new data collection platform.
You can read Chris’ post here/
When Google made its announcement, they missed a massive piece of the puzzle – the people. Who is going to do this migration? Who needs to be skilled up?
We know from our clients and community that resources to operate Google Analytics 3 is tough, and there are abundant training resources for that version.
When it comes to Google Analytics 4 there aren’t as many clear-cut training resources available. There are also a lot of features that are missing from Google Analytics 4.
So, what can you do to get ready?
First of all, breathe. I know that I’m not the most technical person and if I didn’t have someone like Chris on my team I’d be panicking. Google Analytics 4 is MUCH more technical and less intuitive than Google Analytics 3. The goal setup is different, you cannot modify the channel groupings, the menu is mislabeled. Almost nothing is the same between the two systems so it can feel like learning a new language. If you need to have a mini panic attack, go ahead and do it. Get it out of the way.
Ok, now that we’re all breathing normally, let’s get through this together.
Start with a skills gap assessment
It’s time to take stock of your skills and your team’s skills. If you haven’t already, you may need to nominate someone on your team to get trained. Think of a skills gap assessment like a Venn diagram. On one side you have the current state. These are the skill sets you currently have on your team. On the other side, you have the future state, the skills you need to complete the task. In this case, it’s migrating to Google Analytics 4. In the middle of the diagram is what you currently have in common on both sides. What’s left in the future state is where you focus your training efforts.
For example, if your team is comfortable in Google Analytics 3, Google Tag Manager, and Google Data Studio, you’re in good shape. This is your current state. The future state for setting up Google Analytics 4 includes Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio. This means you can focus solely on the new interface and controls in Google Analytics 4.
It could look something like this:
I don’t know about you, but this feels a little less overwhelming now. We’ve determined that we already have a lot of the skills needed to migrate from Google Analytics 3 to Google Analytics 4. This is good news!
Once you know who needs to be skilled up, it’s time to find some resources. As mentioned earlier they are still pretty sparse and there is nothing official from Google themselves.
I’d recommend starting with our list of YouTube videos, more being added all the time.
If you’re looking for additional support, this is a service that we – Trust Insights – offer. You can find out more here.
Let me know how you’re handling the news in our free Slack community, Analytics for Marketers »
– Katie Robbert, CEO
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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris talk about the most overlooked part of any migration, but especially a migration for Google Analytics 4: your people. What are the skills gaps that exist? How bad are they? What should you be doing to mitigate those skills gaps and how strongly will they impact the success of your migration? Tune in to find out!
Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »
Last week on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Live show, we looked at TikTok and social media influencers. Catch the replay here »
This Thursday at 1 PM Eastern, we’ll be doing a live migration of a Google Analytics 3 account to Google Analytics 4.
Are you following our YouTube channel? If not, click/tap here to follow us!
Here’s some of our content from recent days that you might have missed. If you read something and enjoy it, please share it with a friend or colleague!
- What Customers Want
- Will Marketing Be Automated by AI?
- Instagram Brand Data
- Whats Going On With Google Analytics 4 And Universal Analytics?
- So What? Identifying Social Media Influencers on TikTok
Get skilled up with an assortment of our free, on-demand classes.
- How to Prove Social Media ROI new!
- What, Why, How: Foundations of B2B Marketing Analytics
- How to Think About Google Analytics 4
- Fundamentals of Marketing Analytics
- How to Deliver Reports and Prove the ROI of your Agency
- Powering Up Your LinkedIn Profile (For Job Hunters)
- Competitive Social Media Analytics Strategy
In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s take a look at marketing technology adoption. Adoption of various marketing technologies is often a proxy for the marketing maturity of an organization. As a very simple example, if a company’s website has Google Analytics, but not Google Tag Manager, chances are good that company is less mature from a marketing technology perspective.
With that example in mind, let’s take a look at the Fortune 1000+ (Fortune 1000 companies past and present) to see what sorts of marketing technology are in use. Click/tap on any image for the full size version:
This is why announcements about things like Google Analytics matter a great deal – nearly every company in the Fortune 1000+ has Google Analytics tracking snippets on their websites. This is followed by Salesforce, App Nexus, and Office 365.
What’s interesting is how the list of technologies change when we dig into a specific industry. Let’s take a look at the Oil & Gas companies only in the Fortune 1000+:
Here we see Salesforce take the #2 spot, pushing Google Tag Manager down into the #3 slot. This is a much more traditional-looking MarTech stack without as many of the newer marketing technologies. Again, industries with higher MarTech maturity would naturally have more sophisticated marketing technologies visible on their websites.
Speaking of which, what if we pivoted our data to look at adoption of something like Google Analytics by industry? Could we do that, and what would it show? Going by the total number of companies in the Fortune 1000, we see this:
Some industries, like banking, lag far behind others from the Fortune 1000+ – remembering that this does not represent the entire sector, just the top companies in it. Other laggards include consumer goods, computer hardware, and IT (the latter may not be indicative of marketing maturity so much as restrictions and data privacy, especially in cybersecurity).
Google Tag Manager is a more sophisticated tool, part of an overall greater marketing maturity. What does the same industry list look like?
Here we see many more laggards. Banking, construction, and pharmaceuticals are furthest behind in terms of Fortune 1000+ adoption with scant more than half of those companies adopting the technology. That is suggestive of the maturity of those sectors (though obviously some companies could use other technologies such as Tealium or Adobe Tag Manager).
So what? Why do we care about these marketing technologies? For some kinds of marketers – namely MarTech vendors – these lists are essentially targeting lists for new customers. For other kinds of companies, it’s useful to see what the tech stack looks like overall and especially in our industry. Are there solutions we’ve never heard of that are used by our peers? It’s worth checking out to see if there’s an advantage we’re missing.
For marketers with more sophisticated data analysis capabilities, it’s worth checking to see if certain marketing technologies are used by companies who are better leads and customers than others. For example, do your best customers use a certain kind of marketing technology? If so, then this kind of information could help you begin to build predictive sales algorithms.
For all of us, this is useful recruiting data. Why? If your company uses a little-known analytics solution, finding talented individuals with expertise in that technology will be difficult and costly. On the other hand, if you use marketing technologies adopted by the mass market, finding talented individuals is somewhat easier and less expensive. People fluent in Google Analytics, for example, are far more commonplace than people fluent in Matomo or Adobe Analytics. By seeing what’s well known both overall and in our specific industry, we’ll know how easy or difficult it will be to find talent for the solutions we employ.
Methodology: Trust Insights extracted a list of 1,417 companies that have been in the Fortune 1000 since 2002, identified their domain names, and used the Hubspot CRM to append marketing technology data (originally sourced from a company like BuiltWith by Hubspot). Companies without websites were excluded. Companies without identified marketing technologies were excluded. Duplicates were removed. The timeframe of the data is January 1, 2002 – December 31, 2021. The date of study is March 22, 2022. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.
- Case Study: Google Analytics Audit and Attribution
- Case Study: Natural Language Processing
- Case Study: SEO Audit and Competitive Strategy
This is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.
SEO, Google, and Paid Media
- How to Do an SEO Competitive Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide
- Seasonal SEO Tips & Examples For Year-Round Search Improvements
- Local SEO For Beginners: Getting Started
Social Media Marketing
- A New Approach to Social Media Marketing via MarketingProfs Podcast
- Google Ads New Inventory Packages for Ad Campaigns to Encourage Support of Media Diversity via Social Media Today
- LinkedIn Publishes New Guide on the Importance of Employer Branding in the Post-COVID Landscape via Social Media Today
Content Marketing
- 10 Tips for Making Your Content Marketing More Productive and Impactful via Small Business Trends
- 5 Ways to Build B2B Content That Resonates With Your Audience, and Why They Work
- Your Content is Useless Without Good Headlines. Here’s Why via ReadWrite
Data Science and AI
- Andrew Ng predicts the next 10 years in AI via VentureBeat
- Stanford report shows that ethics challenge continue to dog AI field as funding climbs via VentureBeat
- Google To Kill Google Analytics 3 For Google Analytics 4 via Reaction Ain’t Pretty
Are you a member of our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers? Join 1900+ like-minded marketers who care about data and measuring their success. Membership is free – join today. Members also receive sneak peeks of upcoming data, credible third-party studies we find and like, and much more. Join today!
Google is sunsetting Google Analytics 3 / Universal Analytics – aka the web analytics software that 90% of companies still use – on July 1, 2023. Are you ready to make the move to Google Analytics 4?
If not, Trust Insights can help with our Google Analytics 4 migration services. We’ll work together to:
- Inventory your existing Google Analytics 3 infrastructure
- Migrate key conversions and other settings to their GA4 equivalents where possible
- Set up best practices in your GA 4 account
- Migrate to Google’s recommended setup with Tag Manager and Data Studio
Click/tap here to learn more and book a meeting with our team »
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Where can you find us in person?
- MarketingProfs B2B Forum, April 2022, virtual
- MarTech Conference, June 2022, virtual
- MAICON, August 2022, Cleveland, OH – use code PENN150 for $150 off any conference ticket
- MarketingProfs B2B Forum, October 2022, Boston
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