GA4 Setup Guide for Businesses: What to Track and What to Ignore

GA4 replaced Universal Analytics in 2024 and most businesses still have it set up wrong. They’re tracking pageviews and sessions but missing the data that actually tells you whether your marketing is working. Here’s the setup that matters.

The 3 events every lead-generation business must track

• Form submission: fires when a user successfully submits any contact or lead form
• Phone call click: fires when a user taps a phone number link on mobile
• Thank-you page view: fires when a user lands on /thank-you.html after form submission

How to set up conversion events in GA4

In GA4, events become conversions by marking them in Admin → Events → Mark as Conversion. For lead generation, mark your form_submit or thank_you_page_view as a conversion. This enables GA4 to attribute leads back to traffic sources, campaigns, and landing pages.

Connecting GA4 to Google Ads

Once your conversion event is set up in GA4, link it to Google Ads via Admin → Google Ads Links. Then in Google Ads, import the GA4 conversion. This gives your Smart Bidding strategies real conversion data to optimise against instead of guesswork.