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But enough preamble. This month, we’re dishing up GA4 tips, some data on social proof wins, and benchmarking trends in Facebook Ad spend. Let’s dive in.

With the recent change from “conversions” to “key events,” GA4 once again became a topic of discussion for growth marketing teams.

It’s not the first time. Most Universal Analytics properties stopped processing new data on July 1st, 2023. But ask your average marketer how they feel about using GA4 9 months later, and you’ll likely start a conversation about the complicated UI, missing data, and more.

Marketers remembering how easy it was to drill down in UGA a year ago. Image credit: Universal Pictures

For many, GA4 still feels suboptimal. But we’ve helped plenty of partners manage the transition from Universal Analytics in the last year. So we’ve seen a thing or two.

Still dreaming of the halcyon days of UGA? These are our top tips and tricks to feel better about your GA4 data:

Retain your data longer

Unless you’ve already changed it, your default data retention in GA4 is set to 2 months. So we recommend hopping into admin settings and changing that to 14 months. That way, you can keep your data for much longer—which is never an issue in our eyes.

Customize your reports

Pining for the metrics of old, i.e., the way your reports looked in UGA? We’ve got you covered. Click on the pencil icon in the top right of any report to swap in columns for metrics like Bounce Rate and Sessions duration. Nice, right?

Change conversion to fire once per session

There’s nothing worse than that creeping suspicion your data is wrong. Double-counting conversions is one of the bigger problems people are still running into. Thankfully, you can prevent users from being counted twice when filling out more than one form by turning the Counting Method to “Once Per Session” for your conversion event.

Leverage AI for extra insights

We’re personally big fans of his 2000-2001 campaign. Credit: Bleacher Report

Tired of sifting through raw data looking for gems? GA4’s insights tab uses AI to surface those nuggets of data goodness even faster.

The above screenshot shows how LinkedIn page views for a client spiked after a campaign. You can use quick insights like this one to validate the success of your work, faster.

If spring cleaning your analytics account is top-of-mind this quarter, then check out our complete guide for using GA4 in 2024 for more.

Social proof, or the art and science of showing off that others trust you. It’s a marketing staple for businesses of all kinds—from humble hamburger joints to SaaS startups and scaleups.

Very nice—but is your ice cream machine running? Source: Collector Weekly

Why does social proof work? In essence, consumers use social cues, like trust signals and testimonials, to inform buying decisions. And when social proof is incorporated into each stage of the customer journey, good things tend to happen.

Our CRO team has worked on showcasing social proof for clients in a variety of industries. The upshot? We’ve scrounged up some tasty morsels of data validating the social proof hypothesis.

Here are some of the examples:

If your conversions are in need of a boost, try activating social proof on your site in the form of customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, or anything else you can point at to say “see! This person’s happy!”

Looking for more background on social proof? Check out our full blog post.

In a year of tumultuous social media news over at Twitt, erm, X, Facebook kept on, successfully crossing 3 billion individual users in 2023.

And, as growth folks know well, all those eyeballs mean there are plenty of ad impressions to go around. Facebook’s Ad Manager has undergone several changes in recent years, as it continues a general trend toward increased automation of core features.

But what’s the state of Facebook ad spend? How much do clicks and views cost across different industries? Luckily enough, we compile performance data from all our partners quarterly to create updated benchmarks of trends across industries.

This is our latest Cost Per Landing Page View, click-through rate, and Cost Per Result benchmarking data:

And here it is broken down by different industries:

The takeaway? Competition is fiercer than ever. The good news is new automatic and generative AI Facebook Ads features are providing marketers with dynamic ways to get in front of their target audiences.

Get caught up on all you need to know with our 2024 Facebook advertising guide.

👾As of late April, Google’s March core update is still rolling out—and making some big waves in the SERPs. As SEO expert Barry Schwartz reports, many of the hardest-hit sites appear to have also been impacted by September’s Helpful Content update.

In the crosshairs are sites with content that Google perceives to be low-quality or unhelpful. But SEOs are also sharing evidence that pure AI content is on the downswing, too. Couple these massive updates with the potential impact to search visibility from Google’s Search Generative Experience, and 2024 stands to be one of the most turbulent years for SEO in the last decade.

Brands, beware. Check your content against Google documentation to ensure quality, and explore the viability of content distribution through other channels.

We dug into reports that web searches for the phrases “my eyes hurt” and “why do my eyes hurt” spiked dramatically after April 8th’s solar eclipse. And, well…take it in, folks. We won’t see a sight like this again until 2044. (As always, please wear your glasses.)

Credit to Adli, who had it first in Slack. 

Check out case studies, playlists, and more resources for all things growth on our site.

Cheers,

Spencer Cappelli, Senior Content Strategist

Tuff Growth

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