Despite the drastic changes in the data models and interface, calculating ROI on Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has, fortunately, remained the same.
Your ROI gives you a broad view of what's working in your marketing strategy. To grasp the nuances and complexities of your campaigns, you need to investigate further the metrics that directly impact revenue growth.
This guide walks you through calculating the profits from your marketing efforts in this next generation of Analytics and recommends the metrics to get you started.
Return on investment (ROI) in Google Analytics 4 is the total profit generated from your marketing investments.
It’s calculated using the following formula:
[(Total revenue - marketing expenses) / marketing expenses] x 100%
With the deluge of metrics in GA4, it’s hard to know which are worth your time. Treat the metrics below as a starting point to gauge how your digital marketing efforts impact ROI.
(i) COVERSION RATE
What it is:
Conversion rate (CVR) is the percentage of users who completed a valuable action measured against the total number of visitors over a specific time.
How to improve your conversion rate if you don’t know where to start:
(ii) COST PER ACQUISITION
What it is:
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is the price you pay for every customer acquired.
How to improve your cost per acquisition if you don’t know where to start:
(iii) CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE
What it is:
Customer lifetime value (CLTV) is the total worth of a single customer throughout their relationship with your business.
How to improve your customer lifetime value if you don’t know where to start:
(iv) RETURN ON AD SPEND
What it is:
Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the revenue you get back for each dollar spent on advertising.
How to improve your return on ad spend if you don’t know where to start:
(v) REVENUE
What it is:
Revenue is the total amount of money your company generates.
How to improve your revenue if you don’t know where to start:
Your ROI gives you a big-picture view of what's working in your entire marketing strategy.
On a micro-level, you:
Sifting through the noise to find patterns and outliers is a job in and of itself.
Peter Hoopis segmented his audience after analyzing his ad returns.
The owner of Hoopis Pickleball investigated their age, location, shopping habits, and site engagement before dividing them into three distinct groups: beginners, intermediates, and advanced players.
All categories were shown different ads. For example, while beginners saw ads promoting starter kits and beginner-friendly tips, the advanced players were shown tournament updates and top-tier gear.
“We made each ad feel personal,” says Hoopis. “Like it was made just for them and not some generic message. This stretched our ad dollars further and drove more conversions and happier customers.”
By tracking ROI for all campaigns, channels, and content, you can identify what works immediately and growth opportunities with zero guesswork.
When a client’s conversions dipped after migrating to GA4, Banish Angural became concerned.
A deeper analysis of the new attribution models led to a fascinating insight: Display advertising and social media, both previously undervalued channels, played a bigger role in nurturing leads than he realized.
“It completely transformed our budget allocation and campaign optimization strategy,” shares the owner of Banish Media.
Instead of only seeing where conversions happen, Angural can now analyze how different channels influenced the path to purchase and allocate resources accordingly.
“This has been a game-changer, particularly for businesses with longer sales cycles.”
Following the tactics shared above, you’ll have a much easier time backing up the next quarter’s campaign to stakeholders.
The hard part of ROI tracking is determining the conversion value for non-transactional activities in service-based businesses (e.g., assigning a monetary value to leads who downloaded a high-intent whitepaper).
“You really need to understand customer lifetime value, the business, and moving pieces involved,” explains Henrique Figueiredo, senior SEO strategist at Sure Oak Agency.
What Figueiredo means is working closely with key departments and management to figure out an estimated value for customers.
For example, if you want to calculate the conversion value for an enterprise client, collaborate with sales and customer success and consider metrics like expansion, annual recurring revenue, and revenue per channel.
Once you land on a ballpark figure, you'll better understand what’s working in your strategy.
“You can start diving into the channels, initiatives, products, service lines, etc. that drive the most revenue and highest ROI.”
e-Commerce tracking is fairly straightforward in Google Analytics 4.
The best way to do this is through conversion tracking.
Let's imagine you want to increase product purchases for a health supplement e-Commerce store.
Here's how a typical step-by-step process might look like:
(i) Choose a conversion source (website)
(ii) Name the conversion (supplement purchases)
(iii) Pick a category to describe the conversion (purchase/sale)
(iv) Select value of each conversion
(v) Define number of conversions to count per click or interaction
(vi) Complete set-up for remaining fields (conversion window, attribution model, etc.)
(vii) Install the tags (global site + event) to your website to record the conversions.
To access your conversions, review the conversions column.
Next, calculate your ROI using the formula:
[(Total revenue - marketing expenses) / marketing expenses] x 100%
Let's assume your health supplements cost $5,000 to produce; and each bottle retails at $50. You spent a total of $1,500 promoting them, finally clocking in $7,500 in sales.
To calculate marketing ROI:
Marketing ROI: [($7,500 - $1,500) / $1,500] x 100% = 400%
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3 quick steps to measure Google Analytics ROI on DashThis:
DashThis will automatically gather the metrics into the report. Drag and drop them to form a cohesive look.
Customize your ROI report.
Let’s say you want to explain how the next campaign will keep prospects engaged across different touchpoints.
Click Static Widget > Comment.
Share your strategy accordingly and click Save.
For bite-sized information (e.g., defining marketing acronyms like lead generation or providing brief context for an erratic metric), use our notes widget.
Hover to the metric and click Add Note.
Include your text and click Save.
Once you’re done, schedule an automated email dispatch.
Here’s how it works:
Add an optional note and include the report as a PDF attachment.
Alternatively, send over the report via a shareable URL link.
Both options let stakeholders view the ROI report in real time.
Start your free 15-day trial to automate your ROI reports today.
Whether it's strategizing the next move in your content marketing strategy or distributing the marketing budget across a dozen channels, you need a bird’s-eye view of past performance before you make a decision.
This digital marketing report got you covered.
Grab this KPI report template with your own data!
Google Analytics 4 ROI gives you a big-picture view of what's working in your entire marketing performance. To gain a nuanced view of the entire customer journey and your marketing efforts, start with the five metrics above.
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