Analytics, attribution and planning a campaign

Google Analytics 4 basics

• GA4 is event-based: page views, scrolls, clicks, form submissions and purchases are all events; mark important ones as key events (conversions).
• Reports: acquisition (where users come from: source/medium, campaigns), engagement (pages, events), monetisation, retention; Explorations for funnels and paths.
• UTM parameters tag your links so GA4 attributes traffic correctly:

https://example.com/internships?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=diwali_hiring&utm_content=reel_v2

Use consistent, lowercase naming across the team.

Attribution

Customers often touch several channels before converting (sees an Instagram ad, later searches on Google, then clicks an email). Attribution decides which channel gets credit.

• Last click: all credit to the final touch; undervalues awareness channels.
• First click: all credit to discovery.
• Data-driven (GA4 default): credit distributed using your data.

Use attribution as a guide, not truth. Test incrementality with holdout groups or geo experiments when budgets are large.

Planning a campaign (interview case)

"Plan a ₹2 lakh campaign to get students to sign up for our internship platform."

1. Objective and KPI: 5,000 sign-ups; target CPA ₹40 or less.
2. Audience: college students aged 18–24 in metros and tier-2 cities, final years most valuable.
3. Insight and message: "Get hired on real work, not your college name."
4. Channel mix: Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts ads (₹90k), Google search on internship keywords (₹50k), campus ambassadors and student influencers (₹40k), retargeting (₹20k); plus free WhatsApp and LinkedIn community sharing.
5. Creatives: student testimonials, "a day in the internship" Reels, offer-led statics.
6. Tracking: UTMs, the pixel and conversion API, sign-up as a key event, a dashboard.
7. Timeline and optimisation: test week 1, shift budget to the best CPA channels weekly, refresh creatives every 2 weeks.
8. Report: results vs KPI, learnings, next steps.

Check yourself

• Build a UTM-tagged link for a LinkedIn post in a "campus-week" campaign.
• What are the weaknesses of last-click attribution?
• Draft the KPI and channel mix for a ₹50,000 local restaurant campaign.