Sign in with Google Nick Leeder, Vice-President for Google Customer Solutions in APAC, has over 30 year’s experience helping businesses of all sizes grow in Australia, Europe, and Asia.
After years of partnering with small and medium businesses (SMB), I’ve realised that the ones which succeed make this one change to their business: They switch to data-driven attribution to measure and optimise their conversions.
Data-driven attribution is a tried and tested solution for driving business success.
Many SMBs, however, are not aware of how data-driven attribution is different, and more powerful, than the usual measurement solutions.
So here’s all you need to know about the improved way of measurement and how successful SMBs like Palmonas are using GA4’s data-driven attribution to improve ROI and grow revenue.
The drawbacks of conventional measurement tools
If you have a store on an e-commerce platform, you’ll likely rely on the platform’s measurement tool to tell you which channels are driving conversions. But that can limit your business potential because those tools tend to use last-click attribution:
- Last-click attribution does not accurately reflect the customer conversion journey. It fully credits conversion to the last ad channel a customer clicked on, when in fact, it’s multiple touchpoints that lead to an eventual conversion.
Additionally, last-click attribution does not provide data on the contribution of each channel and ad campaign towards the final conversion. This hinders campaign optimisation and improved ROI.
To make up for the lack of conversion data by channels, some businesses turn to the conversion tracking data provided by the ad platforms they use. But that can also lead to inaccuracy:
- Counting each platform and channel’s contribution as a single conversion results in duplication. Multiple platforms and touchpoints contribute to a conversion; their contributions should be measured holistically to prevent over-counting
The modern measurement tool for businesses: Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a measurement tool, powered by Google AI, that provides data-driven attribution and empowers businesses to improve their ROI.
With GA4, you get a full understanding of your customer’s journey across platforms, channels, and devices. The tool also provides insights on customer behaviour, conversion, and your marketing efforts, so you can optimise your campaigns in real-time.
Here’s how GA4 provides a complete understanding of the customer conversion journey and prevents duplication of conversion data across devices and platforms:
- It uses Google signals and your first-party data. This includes durable and unique IDs such as user sign-ins. When user IDs are not available, GA4 can use information collected from Google signed-in and consented accounts to help you understand your customers’ journeys across channels.
- It considers all customer interactions across different platforms and channels. GA4 compares the paths of customers who convert to the paths of those who don’t, and models the data. It identifies patterns among the ad interactions that lead to conversions and attributes the contribution of each ad platform to your business goals.
GA4 also shows you which ads have the greatest effect on your business goals, so you can optimise them in real-time to improve ROI.
Google Analytics case study: How Palmonas grew its revenue by 7X
Palmonas, a direct-to-customer jewellery brand in India, is an SMB with an ambitious growth target. To achieve its business goal, it runs campaigns across different channels.
The challenge: While every channel had its own conversion data, Palmonas didn’t have a holistic view of the actual contribution of each channel towards a conversion. That meant it couldn’t tell which channel was driving the most returns, and it couldn’t optimise its ad spend.
The solution: Palmonas partnered with Google to switch to data-driven attribution by adopting GA4. This gave it a nuanced understanding of its customer journey, and it’s able to accurately assess the value of its campaigns and optimise its ads.
The benefit: With GA4, Palmonas gained data-driven insights that showed how its ad spend is driving business results:
- The data showed that even on low-conversion days, its ads were vital touchpoints for customers. Having seen the ads, customers would go on to research more and eventually make a purchase.
- The data revealed key behavioural traits of customers acquired from different touchpoints. A key discovery was: Customers who had even one Google touchpoint in their user journey had a shorter conversion journey. This meant that its media investments across Google are more cost-effective than across other channels.
GA4’s in-depth channel analysis also empowered Palmonas to optimise its campaigns with precision to drive greater performance:
- It started devoting a portion of its performance marketing spend towards Performance Max to maximise new customer acquisition. This was based on an analysis of how its increase in Google Ads investment correlates with a linear increase in new customers acquired.
- It increased its spend on brand campaigns through YouTube and Demand Gen to increase brand search volumes and acquire new customers. This was based on the analysis that its investment in brand campaigns on Search is already fully optimised.
Palmonas’ success — a 7X revenue growth YOY in the fourth quarter of 2024 — is one that other SMBs can enjoy too, when they switch to a measurement tool like GA4.
Indeed, businesses who link their Google Ads or Google Marketing Platform accounts to a Google Analytics property are correlated with a 23% increase in conversions and a 10% reduction in cost per conversion.
With GA4’s AI-powered data-driven attribution, your business can better understand the complete customer journey and make a more informed decision to optimise your ad spend, improve ROI, and ultimately, drive stellar growth.
