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How Healthcare Marketers Can Prepare for the Switch to Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics has remained a consistent platform for marketers over the last decade. Most healthcare marketing teams have used Google’s Universal Analytics for years to analyze the online activity of current and prospective patients.
For digital marketers across all industries, Google Analytics is a standard and invaluable tool. In short, it allows marketers to see who is visiting their website, how they got there, what they viewed and how long they were active on each page. While these features alone are beneficial, what sets Universal Analytics (UA) apart is that data is updated in real-time—and UA is free for all users.
Despite Universal Analytics’ wide acceptance as the best web analytics tool, Google announced it will be replaced by its product Google Analytics 4 (GA4). So, what changes are happening next year and how will they impact marketing teams? Let’s discuss.
Why the switch to GA4?
Since its release in 2005, Universal Analytics has only changed minimally. However, modern consumers demand more privacy online—especially when it comes to their healthcare providers. To keep up with these consumer demands and stricter government regulations, Google is transitioning away from third-party cookies to a world where IP addresses are anonymous, and data is no longer retained. This also means its core analytics tool is in need of a major overhaul to adapt to these changes.
Thus, the birth of GA4: Google’s more innovative, more customizable and most private marketing solution. But GA4 has not been welcomed with open arms by all digital marketers.
With the announcement of GA4 also came the message that UA would shut off permanently in July 2023. This created a panic amongst some marketers—healthcare included. While patient privacy is of utmost importance to the industry, some healthcare marketers feel like the hard work and knowledge they gained throughout their careers will be lost after July 2023. While that feeling is understandable, GA4 is an opportunity for healthcare marketers to revamp their current marketing system while making the patient’s website experience even more secure.
Consumer and Patient Benefits
Heightened consumer privacy is a huge win for patients and prospects who virtually visit behavioral and addiction treatment centers. According to Google, “GA4 is designed with privacy at its core to provide a better experience for both our customers and their users.” Unlike UA, GA4 will no longer store the IP address of website users. As such, companies will depend on their customers’ willingness to share data to determine a digital marketing strategy.
The switch to GA4 is forward-looking and follows the trend of consumers regaining control of their privacy, but it means healthcare marketing departments will have less of a pull on those who are not current patients. That said, behavioral and addiction treatment centers and their marketing teams need to focus on the factors still in their control, such as how they leverage the first-party data they do have.
How to Prepare for Implementing GA4
While the idea of switching from one Google product (UA) to another (GA4) may seem like it would be easy, the shift will be quite extensive. For instance, UA used a session-based model to track how often a user interacted with a website. With GA4, users must adapt to a more flexible, event-based data model that stores page interactions as events. This is just one example of many changes that may take several months to fully comprehend.
Another possibly problematic development with the transition from UA is improper tool integration. Healthcare marketers should review their toolkit and ensure internal tools are prepared to translate GA4’s updated customer journey when the time comes. Ideally, third-party solutions should be prepared to make the switch to GA4 immediately.
Healthcare marketers need to adopt GA4 as soon as possible to prepare for its numerous updates. The more time they can spend learning the nuances of GA4 and seeing what works best for their team, the more likely they will be set up for success once the UA cut-off date approaches. For example, proactive healthcare marketers will find that GA4 won’t automatically sort data by custom parameters unless this step is activated in the native UI. By identifying these pain points early, marketers can address data issues before they arise in 2023.
Perhaps the most comprehensive piece of advice for behavioral and addiction marketers looking to retain a handle on some online information is to be proactive. Turn GA4 on and let it run for a month. From there, dive into the data and see what is produced. Just like a rough draft, the first few weeks of data may not be exactly what a healthcare marketer wants, or at least, what they are used to. However, with some patience and a few tactical movements, the GA4 setup can be similar to UA, if not better. Marketers should remember that this switch will help their marketing department and, most importantly, create a more secure experience for potential patients.
Chris Todd is senior manager of demand generation for CallTrackingMetrics.
The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Behavioral Healthcare Executive, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.
References
Ketchum R. Prepare for the future with Google Analytics 4. Google. Published March 16, 2022.
Leveraging first party data in a cookieless world. CallTrackingMetrics; 2022.
