A Complete Strategy for Brands Going Overseas: In-depth Analysis of the Joint Application of Google Ads, GA4, GTM and GMC".

With the advancement of globalization, more and more brands are beginning to turn their attention to overseas markets. In this process, how to effectively use the marketing and analysis tools provided by Google has become the key to a brand's successful overseas expansion. This article will discuss in detail the role and application of Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Google Merchant Center (GMC) in brand overseas expansion strategies.

1. Google Ads: Accurate delivery to expand brand influence

Google Ads is an online advertising service provided by Google, which allows advertisers to place ads on Google search results pages and other Google partner websites. For brands going overseas, the importance of Google Ads is self-evident. Through keyword advertising and display advertising, brands can accurately reach target customers and increase brand exposure in overseas markets.

When using Google Ads, brands need to carefully set up campaigns, select appropriate keywords, develop scientific bidding strategies, and regularly optimize ad content and positioning. In addition, using Google Ads' data analysis tools, advertisers can monitor ad performance in real time and adjust delivery strategies to achieve the best ad results.

1. Interface style

In the navigation bar

• Campaign: Perform various operations on the campaign, including but not limited to adjusting keywords, countries, audiences, ads, additional information, etc.

• Goal: Set and adjust account conversion goals.

• Tools: Entrance to common tools, such as Keywords planner, audience settings, account association settings, etc.

• Billing: Access to information related to bill payment.

• Admin: basic settings such as account time zone, user authorization, display interface language, etc.

By setting the time and the data dimension you want to view, you can view relevant data in the content display section. It can be subdivided into data such as clicks, impressions, spending, conversions, etc. at the Campaign level, Ad Group level, and Ads level.

2. Ad Type

Currently, the types of ads placed by Google include search ads, display ads, YouTube ads, shopping ads, Pmax ads, Demand Gen ads launched last year, and APP-related UAC ads.

3. Account Framework

The basic framework of a Google account is that an account can have a Campaign, and a Campaign is divided into different Ad Groups, and each Ad Group contains different Ads.

• At the campaign level, you can set the ad type, delivery target, delivery location, bidding method, etc.

• Ad Group level sets Keywords and Audience. Therefore, we often divide Ad Group by different types of Keywords and Audience.

• The Ads level usually sets the Landing Page, Headline, Description, delivery materials, etc.

You can create 10,000 campaigns under one advertising account. Each campaign can contain up to 20,000 ad groups, and each ad group can contain up to 50 text ads (no more than 3 ads can be run).

2. GA4: Data-driven, optimized marketing strategy

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's new generation of web analytics tools, which provides rich data reports and analysis functions to help brands better understand user behavior and optimize marketing strategies.

Through GA4, brands can track users’ behavior paths on the website, understand their interests and preferences, and adjust website content and layout to improve user experience. At the same time, GA4 can also be deeply integrated with Google Ads to help advertisers more accurately measure advertising effects and optimize advertising strategies.

1. Interface style

In the navigation bar

• Home: provides an overview of the overall data and some report suggestions.

• Report: various data report entrances

• Explore: Commonly used report templates

• Advertising: conversion performance of various channels, attribution paths, advertising data, etc.

• Admin: GA4 account settings, including but not limited to account authorization, asset information settings, event crowd settings, and association with other platforms.

2. Account Framework

Multiple Properties can be created under a GA4 account. Each Property can correspond to multiple data streams, and each data stream corresponds to a website (no more than 50 data streams, and no more than 30 application data streams).

3. Concept introduction

Next, we will mainly introduce two common concepts in GA4: Event and Key Event (formerly known as Conversion).

Event: An event is an action taken by a user on a website. After installing the GA4 code, GA4 will automatically collect some events.

The following are some examples of automatically collected Events:

Key Event: A key event refers to a user behavior that is important to business or marketing. Once an event is marked, it becomes a Key Event. Usually, the default source for advertising conversion import is the Key Event, and you can select some or all Key Events as advertising conversions.

How to set an Event as a Key Event:

In addition, GA4 is also a data analysis platform, so it will have a wealth of data analysis reports. The following are the basic analysis reports that come with GA4. More advanced analysis reports need to be configured by the user.

3. GTM: Flexible tracking to improve data collection efficiency

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management system that allows brands to easily manage and deploy various website tags, such as tracking codes, conversion tracking codes, etc. Through GTM, brands can flexibly add, modify or delete tags without changing the website code, greatly improving the efficiency and accuracy of data collection.

In the process of brand expansion overseas, GTM can help brands quickly adapt to the data tracking needs of different markets, achieve refined user behavior analysis, and provide strong support for the adjustment of marketing strategies.

1. Interface Introduction

• Overview: Overview of current operations

• Tag: Code setting (which data is transmitted to which platform and how much)

• Trigger: Trigger configuration (define user behavior: such as recording a trigger when clicking a button)

• Variables: Variable settings

• Folders: Folder settings-easy management

2. Account Framework

There can be multiple Containers under a GTM account, each Container corresponds to a set of codes and a website.

3. Working principle

GTM is just a platform for code definition and code management. The working method can be simply understood as follows: we first define a user's behavior (such as clicking the submit button) as a trigger, and then transmit the number of times the user clicks the trigger and the information related to this trigger to other data analysis platforms. The specific channel and source of this trigger will be processed by other platforms.

Many people are curious about why GTM is needed since GA4 can collect user behavior data. In fact, GA4 can only collect some user behaviors, and more detailed user behaviors need to be defined through GTM before collection. The user behaviors collected on GA4 are rough, and GA4 itself can only collect partial data, so GTM is needed to define segmented behaviors and transmit them to GA4. For example:

When a user browses your website, the GA4 backend can see the user's browsing page and source and other basic information, but it cannot know how long the user browses the page or which button the user clicks to place an order. In this case, you need to define in the GTM backend: when a user clicks a product link in the product list, an event is triggered, and each click transmits a data to GA4. GA4 will then record the user's click behavior and analyze it.

4. GMC: One-stop management to improve shopping experience

Google Merchant Center (GMC) is a platform provided by Google for e-commerce advertisers to upload, manage and optimize product data for display in advertising channels such as Google Shopping. Through GMC, brands can manage product lists in one stop to improve product exposure and shopping experience.

For overseas brands, the importance of GMC lies in its ability to help brands better display their products and attract potential customers. By optimizing the display and management of product data, brands can improve the quality score of their ads, thereby reducing advertising costs and increasing conversion rates.

1. Interface style:

In the left navigation bar

• Product: You can view all product information and status uploaded to GMC, diagnose product problems, and view feeds. (Product data source or information source provided by merchants to Google)

• Performance: View the product performance data.

• Marketing: Manage promotional activities and shopping advertising settings. (Activity promotion results and advertising-related data set on the website).

• Growth: Check market opportunities, price competitiveness, hot-selling products, shopping experience scores, etc.

2. Operation logic

Here GMC acts more as a "product data processing station". It collects website product data through API and converts it into a format that can be understood by the Google platform, so that it can be displayed on various Google platforms.

3. Application scenarios

• Google Ads: When we want to run shopping ads, or add Shopping placements to Pmax ads, we need to link to GMC.

• Google Shopping: After opening GMC, our products will have the opportunity to appear in the shopping column of Google search engine without paid advertising, and the source is organic shopping traffic.

• YouTube Store: Google's new YouTube feature displays products in the store section of the YouTube channel. This feature is also achieved by linking GMC with the independent website and YouTube.

Going global is a complex and challenging process, but with the help of four tools, Google Ads, GA4, GTM and GMC, brands can reach target customers more accurately, optimize marketing strategies, and improve user experience, thus achieving successful expansion in overseas markets. I hope that the analysis in this article can provide some useful references and inspirations for brands going global. So how do Google Ads, GA4 and GTM work together? Please pay attention to the next sharing to answer your questions!

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