
What are audiences and segments in GA4
For Google Analytics 4 (GA4), think of an 'audience' as a special group of website visitors who have something in common, like their actions or interests. These audiences help you understand what these visitors do on your site and what they like.
Now, audiences and segments are your helpful allies for making your website better. Imagine you have visitors who do a lot on your site but don't make a purchase; you can create an audience just for them and send them personalized offers to encourage them to buy.
Also, audiences let you study how different groups of users behave. For instance, you can compare new visitors to your regular customers. Audiences and segments are tools that help you discover insights, find problems, and spot opportunities on your website. It's a bit like using a magnifying glass to look closely at what people are doing on your site.
The basic audiences in GA4
You'll find pre-built audience templates ready to streamline your insights. These templates cover a spectrum of user behaviors, making it effortless to target specific groups. For instance, you can tap into the '7-day inactive purchasers' segment which encompasses users who were once active but haven't engaged for the past week. Similarly, the 'Cart abandoners' template is ideal for re-engaging users who added items to their carts but didn't follow through with a purchase.
The differences between GA4 and marketing platforms
Creating audiences in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) opens up a whole new dimension in audience management. Unlike standard marketing platforms that rely on cookies, GA4 leverages your first-party data and Google signals. What's truly remarkable is that once you create an audience in GA4, it doesn't remain confined within the platform's borders; it goes live across all your marketing platforms. GA4's versatility is further underscored by its four distinct data types: Google's data, events, metrics, and user-scoped data. If you're eager to harness the full potential of GA4's data types, you can contact us to learn about our GA4 audience workshop.
How to build in the UI
- Navigate to create audience screen: There are two options to navigate to the creating audience screen
- Go to Admin - Audiences - click on “New audience” - Choose to start from scratch or to use a reference

- When creating/editing a segment, check the box next to “Build an audience”

- Name your audience: Start by giving your audience a clear and descriptive name. You can also add additional details if needed.

- Define your audience scope: Determine the conditions for your audience based on what you want to track. This step is highly dependent on your specific goals.

- Refine your audience criteria: Enhance your audience by specifying details using ‘events’, ‘dimensions’, and ‘metrics’. You can apply AND and OR conditions, incorporate sequencing, and set exclusions to fine-tune your audience further.

- Set your membership duration: Choose how long you want to keep this audience for analysis or activation based on your business's sales or marketing cycles. Options range from 7 to 540 days (18 months) from the time a user was added to the audience list.

- Consider your audience triggers: For advanced refinement, consider adding ‘audience triggers’. These allow you to trigger a new event when the audience criteria are met, similar to creating a custom conversion event with specific parameters. Depending on your needs, this step may not always be necessary.

- Review and save: Check the summary to see how many users are included in your audience and their percentage of your total traffic. This information is akin to estimates provided by ‘segments’ in ‘universal analytics’. Once you've configured your audience, save your settings.

Must-know features
Exclusion rules: Choose between permanent or temporary exclusion of users who meet specific criteria. Decide whether you want to allow users to return to your audience or not.
Sequences: Utilize sequences to craft audiences based on users who have completed a sequence of conditions, providing a more refined targeting approach.
Static/dynamic evaluation: Opt for static inclusion, which considers users if the condition was ever true, or dynamic evaluation, which includes users when they meet the condition and excludes them when they no longer do, ensuring accuracy in audience composition.
Dynamic lookback: Set dynamic lookback periods to include or exclude users based on whether they satisfy parameters within the last N days, allowing for real-time adjustments.
Predictive audiences: Enhance your audience insights by leveraging Google's machine-learning expertise to predict future user behavior, providing valuable foresight for your marketing strategies.
Audience triggers/multi-step conversion: Employ audience triggers to activate events when users match the defined audience criteria, facilitating multi-step conversion tracking and engagement optimization.
These features empower you to create precise and highly tailored audiences, enabling more effective audience management and targeted marketing efforts in GA4.
To master the art of audience creation, explore audience features and maximize the benefits of GA4 audiences. Contact us for more information about our GA4 audience workshop where you discover best practices and unleash the full potential of precise targeting that takes your audience strategies to the next level.