Building Foundational GA4 Reports

This guide focuses on creating essential reports in GA4 that will help startups like yours measure if you're reaching the right people (your Ideal Customer Profile - ICP), increasing visibility within your ICP, and demonstrating ROI for your marketing efforts.

 

Key Concepts Before We Build:

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• Dimensions: These are attributes of your data (e.g., traffic source, page title, city).

• Metrics: These are the quantifiable measurements (e.g., users, sessions, conversions).

• Segments: These allow you to isolate specific groups of users or sessions (e.g., users from organic search, users who visited a specific product page).

• Conversions: These are the valuable actions you want users to take on your website (e.g., form submissions, purchases, sign-ups). Make sure you have these set up in GA4.

 

Report 1: Understanding Your Audience (ICP Match)

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This report helps you understand if you're attracting your ICP.

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1. Demographics Report (Pre-built): Navigate to "User" -> "Demographics overview." This gives you a snapshot of age, gender, and interests of your audience. Compare this data to your defined ICP. Are you reaching the right age groups? Do the interests align with your target market?
    

2. Acquisition by User Properties (Custom): This will show you how different user properties are interacting with your site.
    

   • Go to "Reports" -> "Library" -> "Create new report" -> "Explore".

   • Add "Session source / medium" as a dimension to the Rows section.

   • Add "Users", "Engaged sessions", "Conversions" as metrics to the Values section.

   • Add "User property" as a dimension to the Rows section.

   • Add a filter for "User property" and select the user property that contains your ICP data.

3. Engagement by User Properties (Custom): This will show you how different user properties are interacting with your site.
    

   • Go to "Reports" -> "Library" -> "Create new report" -> "Explore".

   • Add "Session source / medium" as a dimension to the Rows section.

   • Add "Users", "Engaged sessions", "Conversions" as metrics to the Values section.

   • Add "User property" as a dimension to the Rows section.

   • Add a filter for "User property" and select the user property that contains your ICP data.

 

Report 2: Measuring Visibility Within Your ICP

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This report helps you track how visible you are to your target audience.

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1. Traffic Acquisition Report (Pre-built): Go to "Acquisition" -> "Traffic acquisition." This report shows you where your traffic is coming from. Pay attention to "Organic Search" – this indicates how visible you are in search results.
    

2. Landing Page Report (Pre-built): Go to "Engagement" -> "Pages and screens." This report shows you which pages are getting the most traffic. Are your key product/service pages getting visibility?
    

3. Search Queries Report (Search Console Integration): Link your Google Search Console account to GA4 (if you haven't already). This will give you access to the "Search Queries" report (under "Acquisition" -> "Search Console"). This report shows you the keywords people are using to find your website. Are these keywords relevant to your ICP?
    

Report 3: Demonstrating Marketing ROI

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This report helps you track the return on investment for your marketing campaigns.

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1. Campaign Performance Report (Custom):

   • Go to "Reports" -> "Library" -> "Create new report" -> "Explore".

   • Add "Session campaign" as a dimension to the Rows section.

   • Add "Users", "Sessions", "Conversions", and "Event count" for key conversion events as metrics to the Values section.

   • If you're using UTM parameters to tag your campaigns (highly recommended), you can use those dimensions here as well. You can add "Session source / medium" as a dimension to the Rows section.

   • Add a filter to only show the campaigns you want to analyze.

2. Attribution Report (Pre-built): Go to "Advertising" -> "Attribution" -> "Model comparison." This report helps you understand how different marketing channels are contributing to your conversions. Experiment with different attribution models (e.g., last click, first click, linear) to see how they affect your understanding of ROI.
    

Key Tips for Startups:

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• Use Segments: Combine these reports with segments to get even more granular data. For example, you could segment your traffic by users from a specific campaign and then analyze their demographics or behavior.

• Track Conversions: Make sure you're tracking the conversions that are most important to your business. This is crucial for measuring ROI.

• Regularly Review: Set aside time each week or month to review these reports and identify trends. This will help you make data-driven decisions about your marketing strategy.

• Customize: Don't be afraid to customize these reports to fit your specific needs. GA4 is very flexible.

 

By building and regularly reviewing these foundational reports, you'll gain valuable insights into your audience, track your visibility within your ICP, and demonstrate the ROI of your marketing efforts. This data-driven approach is essential for startup success.