What Legal Marketers Need to Know About The New Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics is the most used website analytics tool in the world. Law firm marketers use Google Analytics to read and analyze website data and learn in-depth details about their website visitors. Google recently announced a new version of analytics – Google Analytics 4 – with new features designed to improve marketing decisions and get better ROI. What does the new version mean for legal marketers and how does it compare to the traditional version? Here’s everything legal marketers need to know about the new Google Analytics 4. 

According to Google’s announcement, here is what you can expect from Google Analytics 4: 

“To help you get better ROI from your marketing for the long term, we’re creating a new, more intelligent Google Analytics that builds on the foundation of the App + Web property we introduced in beta last year. It has machine learning at its core to automatically surface helpful insights and gives you a complete understanding of your customers across devices and platforms. It’s privacy-centric by design, so you can rely on Analytics even as industry changes like restrictions on cookies and identifiers create gaps in your data. The new Google Analytics will give you the essential insights you need to be ready for what’s next.”

– Vidhya Srinivasan
Vice President, Measurement, Analytics, and Buying Platforms, Google

Google Analytics 4 Gets 3 Powerful New Features:

Google made the announcement about the new and improved platform, citing major benefits that can be realized with the new technology. The culmination of these new features provides more context and more insights for law firms.

1. Smarter insights to improve marketing decisions and ROI

Google is using more advanced machine learning to power this version of analytics. That means users will be able to see more information on trends and anticipate future actions. This platform also offers a deeper integration with Google’s marketing stack, so you can apply those insights to marketing programs in real time.

2. A more thorough understanding of how clients interact with your firm

Rather than by device or platform, this version of analytics fragments by customer type and user. It uses multiple facets to determine use at an individual level so you can see how people interact with your firm across your entire digital presence. 

3. “Built for the long term”

A benefit mentioned by Google themselves, their goal was to help business and firms prepare for what’s next. Due to rising consumer expectations, regulatory developments, and changing technology standards, the digital landscape continues to evolve – and implementing this platform now can help firms not only prepare for, but take advantage of, changes over the coming years. 

New Capabilities Available on Google Analytics 4:

• Automatically notify teams of important events like a sudden surge in traffic on certain pages
• Generate several “predictive” metrics such as the revenue that could be realized by strengthening engagement with certain online prospects
• Provide information on the new “user acquisition” dashboard which shows firms data regarding the channels through which they acquire more clients
• Improves security and privacy issues through an improved data deletion tool
• Enables new codeless event tracking so that law firms require less Google code on their pages to track things like video views
• Lays the groundwork to become more privacy-friendly, for a “future without cookies or identifiers”
• Provide new insight to podcasters by sharing data on search terms, clicks, and impressions that help them understand how they’re being discovered (through Podcast Manager)

Related: 10 Things Legal Marketers Can Learn from Google Analytics

Takeaway

By moving to Google Analytics 4, firms will be able to gain deeper insights into client behavior and apply those insights more quickly and efficiently. Google plans to make their new Google Analytics the default experience for users. They are currently encouraging all users to create a new Google Analytics 4 Property alongside any existing properties, to fully take advantage of new functionality. Only once you’re able to start gathering data from your new property should you turn off your old one.

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