Day: July 2, 2023

Major Brand Sponsors & Breweries Connect at Pride Beer Dabbler 2023

Home Business Magazine Online

Throughout June Pride Month, parades and festivals nationwide brought so many people together to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. Pride Beer Dabbler was one major Twin Cities event that attracted a huge crowd and proved to be an excellent brand marketing opportunity. Taking place in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Pride Beer Dabbler gave attendees the chance to sample unlimited pours from 90+ breweries, cideries, and more.

Just like at all Beer Dabblers, breweries based in Minneapolis and Saint Paul were really popular with the swarms of attendees. Lines were long at the booths for InBound BrewCo., Lakes & Legends Brewing Company, Urban Growler Brewing Company, and Wabasha Brewing Company. Other top booths were for locales based in the Twin Cities metro area, such as Lakeville Brewing Company (of Lakeville), Ineffable Brewing Co. (of Burnsville), Lift Bridge Brewing Co. (of Stillwater), and Waconia Brewing Company (of Waconia).

Pride Beer Dabbler 2
Waconia Brewing had a festive and fun booth for Pride Month.

Beer and cider lovers had such a great time flitting from booth to booth to sample special Pride Month brews and pick up fun branded swag. Brewery representatives were also able to tell attendees all about their establishment and promote new products. DJ Shannon Blowtorch helped create an electrifying atmosphere with her tunes, and attendees were also seen happily playing games of giant beer pong and corn hole.

Whenever anyone got hungry, they could pop by food trucks for popular vendors like El Burrito Mercado. There were also booths for sponsors like All Solar Energy, Little Growlers Treats, Paradise Popcorn, and Sota Clothing. Attendees also checked out booths for QUEERSPACE Collective, Open Arms of Minnesota, and Brewing Change Collaborative.

Pride Beer Dabbler 3
Beer enthusiasts had a blast trying new brews.

Pride Beer Dabbler was made possible by other renowned sponsors, including yelp, Minnesota Lottery, Inver Grove Brewing Co., Star Tribune newspaper, Dabbler Depot, Can Can Wonderland, Verist THC-infused seltzer, and J’s Kombucha.

If you work for a brewery or lifestyle company and want to grow your brand awareness in the Twin Cities market, I recommend sponsoring next year’s Pride Beer Dabbler. It will help you connect with a ton of new consumers who may become loyal customers of your brand.

The post Major Brand Sponsors & Breweries Connect at Pride Beer Dabbler 2023 appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/lifestyles/brand-sponsors-breweries-connect-pride-beer-dabbler-2023/

13 of the funniest reactions to GA4: The roast of Google Analytics 4

Marketers haven’t had the easiest time migrating from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4.

Some advertisers are so frustrated with the new tool, that they’ve even been holding funerals for UA in the hope that Google might get the message and make a sudden U-turn.

Search Engine Land recently ran a poll to find out how the industry is coping and to give marketers an opportunity to get their voices heard – and the feedback was interesting to say the least.

The enforced switchover is a historic transitional moment in digital marketing history, and we know it’s a big adjustment. But if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. So with that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the funniest reactions we received to Google’s enforced GA4 switchover. Enjoy!

Short and sweet. Some marketers were able to summarise their experiences with GA4 in just a few words.

  • “Mad! Mad! Mad!
  • “Total cr*p!”
  • “GA4 = LAME!”
  • “One word (in fact two words): BS!”
  • “What a Waste of our time.”
  • GA4 UI team should be fired

“Google should be ashamed!” Marketers certainly know how to articulate their frustrations. They also know how to dish out some pretty epic one liners. We’re so glad we won’t be answering calls on the GA4 customer service desk on Monday.

  • “Did they find the software in a Christmas cracker? The biggest pile of sh*t I have ever seen. Unusable for scenario of casual small business owner with a simple question about their stats. I can only conclude that Google deliberately wanted to obfuscate people’s access to their own website data. If it doesn’t get better, considering removing from many customers’ sites because it is just pointless drag on speed stats.”
  • “GA4 is potentially the worst product update ever from a pure usability perspective, and Google should be ashamed of its current state.”
  • “Google trying to do tableau for dummies is not working on either level.”
  • “Simply Put, GA4 Sucks. It is a pain in the a*s to use (NOT USABLE) requires much more time than previous version lacks the same visual impact as GA3 it is junk.”

Mind games. What if Google secretly designed GA4 with a hidden agenda; to get marketers to stop using its own tools and turn to its competition instead? Makes sense. Kinda. Well, not really.

  • “This might be the least user-friendly product Google has ever produced. Almost like they don’t want people to use it.”

I’m outta here! A fantastic solution if you’re not a fan of GA4; turn on your Out Of Office, go on vacation and wait for all of this to blow over. Of course, it probably won’t. But definitely a great short-term option.

  • “I have been dreading the arrival of this date so much that I booked a trip out of town. LOL. My hope is that by the time I return from vacation, Google will have changed their mind, and Universal Analytics will continue to exist.”

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You can’t make me. Alternatively, if you’re not in a position to take a vacation right now, just close your eyes, pretend GA4 isn’t happening and do nothing. What could possibly go wrong?

  • “Our marketing department doesn’t have the faintest idea how to follow complex directions. And most of them are out of the office for the next two weeks. So IT kicked the project over to our business insights department, who swiftly said, “We don’t have anything to do with Google Analytics anymore. Talk to Marketing. Now it looks like the project is mine. I’m a one-person department. I’m not gonna do sh*t. That’s my GA4-adjacent sob story.”

Why we care: We’re all in the same boat right now. After 11 years of relying so heavily on Universal Analytics, migrating over to GA4 is a daunting task. But unfortunately, we don’t have a choice (unless you want to consider a GA4 alternative). So we might as well get our heads down and try to figure it all out. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a laugh along the way.

The post 13 of the funniest reactions to GA4: The roast of Google Analytics 4 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/funniest-reactions-ga4-roast-google-analytics-428932

9 GA4 training courses to help confused marketers

Marketers have been pulling their hair out trying to get to grips with Google Analytics 4 – fortunately, we’ve got some good news.

There are a bunch of incredible courses and resources available that’ll boost your confidence and understanding of how to use the new platform.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of 9 Google Analytics 4 training courses that you may want to consider.

1. Marketing Land

Cost: $249

Level: Advanced

Duration: Two days

Search Engine Land’s former ‘Search Marketer of the Year’, Colleen Harris, is running this SMX Masterclass course online live on August 16 and 17. “The Marketing Land course is designed to give people practical applications of GA4,” Harris said. “It’s also looking at GA4 under the theme of ‘I got through July now what do I do?’ So much of GA4 this last year has just been getting things set up now it’s time to go back and say ‘how can I get more out of this tool?’”

Harris will be covering the following topics:

  • How to compare Universal GA and GA4 data after the move to GA4
  • Understanding how to build audiences to use within advertising plus a deep dive into the advertising reporting in GA4
  • Best practices for custom reporting and libraries
  • Differences between custom events, parameters and dimensions
  • How to leverage GTM for custom events and parameters

2. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Cost: $600

Level: Three learning levels – principles, intermediate and advanced

Duration: One day

This course, put together by The Chartered Institute of Marketing, is available both in-person and online. It sets out to teach marketers how to implement GA4 and show them the advantages this system has over its predecessor, Universal Analytics.

Key features of the course include:

  • Insights powered by artificial intelligence (AI) 
  • Deeper audience integration with Google Ads 
  • Customer lifecycle-framed reporting 
  • Customer-centric data measurements  
  • New navigation and reporting 
  • Enhanced e-commerce reporting 
  • Customise reports
  • Using explore reports

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3. Google Analytics 4 Kickstarter

Cost: $2,500 (for any team size)

Level: Beginner to intermediate

Duration: Six hours in total, spread across two three-hour sessions on different days

Delivered to you and your team live online, no experience is necessary for Measure Lab’s GA4 course – although there are more advanced courses available. The course comprises four modules designed to help marketers get up to speed with Google’s new analytics tool.

The course covers the following topics:

  • How GA4 works 
  • Account structure and setup
  • Using the interface 
  • Key metric definitions
  • Tracking your campaigns 
  • Standard acquisition reports 
  • Attribution modelling 
  • Advanced marketing reports
  • Reporting identities 
  • Event and page reporting 
  • Event customisation 
  • Funnels and user flows 
  • Building and using Audiences 
  • Exploration techniques
  • Segments 
  • Activation 

4. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for SEO

Cost: $49.99

Level: Beginner to intermediate

Duration: 10 videos

SEO consultant Joe Hall created this all inclusive GA4 course specifically to help SEOs. In the course, Hall details each step to getting your website set up on GA4, as well as how to build various custom reports for organic traffic.

The course covers the following topics:

  • Setting things up
  • Events and conversions
  • Collections and library
  • How to create an organic traffic report
  • How to create an organic landing pages report
  • How to create an organic conversions report
  • How to create a referring search engines report
  • How to create an organic sessions GEO map report
  • How to create an organic traffic dashboard
  • GA4 Organic Traffic Report Creation Cheat-Sheet [PDF]

5. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Complete Course

Cost: $225

Level: Intermediate to advanced

Duration: 7 HD video lessons to watch at your own pace

Love Data’s practical and comprehensive course was created to help marketers master GA4 and give them a much needed confidence boost. The lessons teach you how to build GA4 reports and use them to improve the performance of your website and/or campaign.

This course covers the following topics:

  • How to use the default reports and customize them to meet your needs.
  • Correctly track inbound marketing campaigns and report on their performance.
  • Create custom audiences for in-depth analysis, reporting, and remarketing.
  • The major differences between GA4 and Universal Analytics.
  • Using conversion and e-commerce reports to measure and optimize conversions.
  • Understanding how your marketing channels work together to drive conversions.
  • Configuring GA4 to collect meaningful and accurate data

6. Google Analytics 4: Implementation and Configuration

Cost: $635

Level: Intermediate

Duration: One day

Available in person and online, Jellyfish’s GA4 course was designed for marketers who already have some knowledge of GA4, such how reports are created and data is collected. It teaches all marketers need to know about setting up GA4, configuring and auditing properties and how the new platform differs from UA. Marketers will also have their newfound knowledge put to the test with hands-on, in-platform exercises.

This course covers the following topics:

  • Introduction to GA4 & Considerations
  • Planning a GA4 Implementation
  • Initial GA4 Set-up
  • Enhanced Measurement
  • Event & Ecommerce Configuration
  • Custom Definition Set-up
  • GA4 Property Settings
  • GA4 Product Integrations

7. Become Great at Google Analytics 4

Cost: $299

Level: Intermediate

Duration: 5 hours 9 minutes

Created by Charles Farina, Head of Innovation at Adswerve, this course aims to teach marketers everything they need to know to get started with GA4. Farina discusses an array of topics from data integrations to funnels to pathing reports. Upon completion, marketers are awarded a certificate.

Key features of the course include:

  • Understanding why GA4 is the future of Google Analytics and why getting started now is important
  • Learning about the new event-driven data model GA4 uses and how it is similar or different to other analytics solutions
  • Developing an implementation plan for dual-tagging or migration of your existing Google Analytics properties
  • Ability to leverage enterprise features that were previously only available in Google Analytics 360 including the BigQuery integration, funnels, and unsampled data

8. Bespoke GA4 Training Solutions for every business

Cost: From $1,620

Level: Beginner to intermediate to advanced

Duration: One day

Optix Digital Academy offers bespoke training days, which can be delivered in-person and online, to suit your business’ needs. Marketers are invited to submit a brief detailing specific areas they need assistance with ahead of the course, and an outline of the training day is then agreed between the company and your business.

This course covers the following topics:

  • Introduction to GA4
  • GA4 & GTM
  • Setting up GA4
  • GA4 Interface
  • E-commerce in GA4
  • Events & conversion tracking
  • Reports
  • Explore
  • Advertising
  • Developer Support

9. Google Analytics 4 for Beginners – New Google Analytics

Cost: $70

Level: Beginner

Duration: Two-hours on demand video

This Udemy course is available on mobile and TV, and was created for people starting their careers in digital marketing. A certificate is awarded upon completion with students graduating with new skills in being able to analyze website and campaign performance.

This course covers the following topics:

  • What is Google Analytics 4 and how it works02:31
  • GA4 Data Model
  • Creating a GA4 property
  • Upgrading from Google Analytics to Google Analytics 4
  • Overview of Google Analytics reports
  • Understanding Acquisition Reports
  • Campaign Tracking
  • Campaign Builder
  • Engagement Reports
  • Active Users and Stickiness
  • Retention Reports
  • Analysis Hub Overview
  • Exploration Analysis

Why we care. One of the most common complaints we saw when reviewing the answers to our GA4 readiness poll was that marketers don’t think Google has provided enough resources with regards to using the new analytics system. If you’re in this boat and are struggling with GA4, it’s essential you brush up on your knowledge so that you can continue to monitor the performance of your campaigns or else you won’t be able to accurately report your successes back to clients.

What’s the problem with GA4? Marketing Land course creator Colleen Harris told Search Engine Land that there are a lot of differences between UA and GA4, and marketers are finding the changes challenging. “There are a lot of new features in GA4 and workflow updates,” she explained. “This is also a time where most digital marketers are already trying to do so much with little time, and this is one more big thing.”

Harris added that the attribution changes within GA4 are currently posing the biggest issue to marketers. “Folks are used to getting a lot of data about the users and the reality of marketing is that we all will be getting less data and have to the same with it,” she continued.

Has Google not provided enough help? Marketers have complained that Google has not given them enough tools and resources to get their heads around GA4. However, Harris tells Search Engine Land that Google has done the best it can given the deadlines it had to meet and the large volume of people they were working with. She said: “All those UA codes come with every level of knowledge and skills, so trying to educate so many people at so many different levels is a feat.”

Why should marketers invest in GA4 training? Marketers need access to data behind their campaigns to monitor performance, create reports and make adjustments for improved ROI. So it’s essential that advertisers gain confidence in using GA4. “Data is going to flow and GA4 isn’t going to go away, so the more you stay away from it the harder it is to become comfortable with it,” said Harris.

In addition to needing to know the essentials, GA4 comes with a lot of benefits that could make a huge difference to your campaign. “The conversions path report is one of the best parts of GA4 that lets you start to understand the early, mid and late touch point before the conversions happen,” added Harris. “It opens up a lot in terms of understanding activity before the conversions.”

Deep dive: For free information and resources on how to us GA4, read the ‘Google Analytics 4 account training guide and support‘ guide.

The post 9 GA4 training courses to help confused marketers appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/ga4-training-courses-help-confused-marketers-428935