Why are BigQuery and GA4 the perfect match?

Companies are collecting more and more data about their customers and their activities, which makes the use of advanced analytical tools increasingly important and common. Recently, also due to the sunset of the “old” GA (Universal Analytics version) from 01.07.2023, two important tools, Google BigQuery and Google Analytics 4 (GA4), are gaining in popularity. In this article, we will show how integrating these two tools with each other allow us to draw valuable conclusions for our organization and make even better business decisions. Why are BigQuery and GA4 the perfect match?

Why BigQuery and GA4?

BigQuery (BQ), for short, is a database in the Google Cloud Platform that allows you to quickly and easily analyze large data sets. Google Analytics 4, on the other hand, is a tool created by Google to collect detailed data about customers and their behavior in the company’s applications and websites. Together, these two tools bring us a very powerful combination that allows businesses to gain valuable analysis from the data collected.

What benefits will you get by integrating BigQuery with GA4?

One of the key benefits of integrating these tools is the ability to process and analyze large data sets in an efficient way in terms of the cost and time required for analysis. Moreover, we don’t have to worry anymore about sampling the data in Google Analytics 4 owing to the possibility of sending the raw data to BigQuery. Thus, the analyses are based on the full set of data, which gives the full context of the analysed topic. Once we have an established project within BigQuery connected to GA4, then we can freely query the database to find answers to business questions.

Here are some practical examples of how to use this integration:

1. E‑commerce: by analyzing user behavior and transactions in GA4, businesses can draw valuable conclusions about which products are most popular, which channels bring in the most sales, or how to optimize product promotions and prices. And integrating GA4 with BigQuery gives us even more possibilities. Using the raw data in BQ, we can create more in-depth and detailed analyses, such as looking for patterns in the purchases of returning customers, or advanced analyses related to lifetime value. Such solutions, in addition to predictive models in GCP, will also allow us to predict which users are more likely to make a purchase. Consequently, the result of such analyses can be used in personalizing what such a user sees; for example, on the basis of our analyses, in BQ we can build an audience segment and then use this segment in targeting our ads with Google Ads, which will make our ads even more effective. One example of analysis, which is made possible by combining Google Analytics 4 with BigQuery, is the analysis of a customer’s lifetime value depending on which product category was their first purchase. This allows us to optimize media costs for the highest possible LTV at the very stage of campaigns acquiring new customers.

1. Mobile apps: Google Analytics 4 allows you to study how users interact with a mobile app, including the most popular screens of the app, how much time users spend in the app, or how often they return to the app. By integrating GA4 with BigQuery, the team can analyze the exact usage of individual app features, or perform so-called “AHA moment” analysis, and build advanced app/product analytics within the organization.

1. Campaign Effectiveness: GA4 has many powerful features for analyzing campaign effectiveness, such as examining the performance of individual campaigns, creatives, number of users, revenue, number of transactions or conversion rate. After integrating GA4 with BigQuery, we gain access to advanced media data analytics. We can easily take advantage of ML tools on GCP and use our own models to check, for example, which type of creative or message increases the chance of conversion and what type of communication should be applied to particular user segments.

Summary

BigQuery and GA4 are powerful tools on their own, but it’s their combination that gives businesses the most opportunities. The lack of data sampling, the quick and easy way to analyze large data sets, or the ability to use advanced predictive models to forecast the behavior of our consumers are just some of the many benefits of using BQ integration with GA4.  Thus, this is a solution that every business should consider implementing in order to be able to, among other things, understand consumer behavior even better, or find the most effective paths to reach them, and thus make even better business decisions. 

If you need help with either the relevant strategy for the effective usage of BigQuery for your organization or the use of an integration of BigQuery and GA4, please contact our experts at SalesTube (hello@salestube.tech).