Forecasting for Marketers: Mastering Google Analytics

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Effort

6 weeks, 1 hour a week
Sessions

Self-Paced
Level

Intermediate
Subtitles

English

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Overview

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Unlock GA4 forecasting to assess channel performance, retention, checkout behavior, and revenue. This course helps marketers turn Google Analytics 4 data into clear reports, forecasts, and monitoring workflows for decisions. Throughout the course, you’ll explore: Traffic Source Analysis: Use filters, comparisons, dimensions, and segments to assess sources and landing pages clearly. Retention Cohorts: Build channel cohorts, read return rates, and compare return with return-to-purchase behavior. Campaign and Funnel Reporting: Register custom dimensions, metrics, and calculated metrics; then locate checkout drop-off with ecommerce reports and funnel explorations. Sessions and Revenue Forecasts: Separate trend, seasonality, and noise; use GA4 predictive metrics, Looker Studio, Google Sheets, and FORECAST.LINEAR to forecast next month’s sessions and revenue. Automated Monitoring: Create alerts, scheduled reports, PDF dashboard delivery, and email notifications for important performance shifts. By the end of the course, you’ll be able to evaluate performance with focused GA4 views, make forecasts with stated uncertainty, and scale monitoring without alert fatigue.

Syllabus

How to Isolate a Single Traffic Source in GA4 With Report Filters, Comparisons and Segments
- This module shows how to separate one traffic source from the blended totals that most analytics reports display, so its real performance becomes visible. You will explore why a single combined figure like total sessions can hide a working campaign or flatter a weak page, how Google Analytics' four separation tools — report filters, comparisons, segments, and data filters — each suit a different kind of question, and how to build a focused view of one paid source and rank its landing pages honestly by filtering out low-traffic noise. These skills give you a repeatable way to judge any single channel on its own terms rather than on an average that describes no one.
How to Measure User Retention by Acquisition Channel With a GA4 Cohort Exploration
- This module shows how to measure whether the visitors a channel brings actually return over time, rather than judging channels only by how many people they deliver. You will explore why returning visitors tend to cost far less than new ones, how a cohort table groups people by when they first arrived and tracks their return week by week, and how to break that table down by acquisition channel and switch between counting any return and counting only returns that end in a purchase. These skills let you compare channels by the loyalty and revenue they produce, using a view that a standard traffic report cannot provide.
How to Register Custom Dimensions, Custom Metrics and Calculated Metrics in a GA4 Property for Campaign Reporting
- This module shows how to make business-specific details visible in Google Analytics reports by registering them as custom definitions. You will explore why custom information a site collects stays hidden until it is registered, how the scope of a definition — whether it describes a single action or a person — changes the report it produces, and how to register text labels, numeric measures, and metrics calculated from existing figures within a property you control. These skills let you set up the fields needed to answer questions that the standard, built-in reports were never designed to address.
How to Find Where Shoppers Drop Out of the Checkout With GA4 Ecommerce Reports and Funnel Explorations
- This module shows how to locate the exact point where an online store loses shoppers during checkout, rather than relying on a single overall conversion rate that reveals only that a problem exists. You will explore why the purchase process behaves as a funnel with predictable drop-off points, how Google Analytics records shopping as a chain of named events, and how to build a step-by-step checkout funnel, split it by device, and identify where losses are heaviest and for whom. These skills turn a vague sense that "sales are low" into a specific, assignable finding about a particular step and a particular type of visitor.
How to Forecast Next Month's Sessions and Revenue From GA4 Data With Predictive Metrics, Data Studio and Google Sheets
- This module shows how to turn recent analytics history into a defensible estimate of near-future traffic and revenue, using free tools. You will explore why most marketing decisions already rest on an unstated forecast and how a baseline, a target, and a scenario differ, how any metric can be separated into trend, seasonality, and random variation, and how to project a trend line into a spreadsheet, state its likely error, and use built-in predictive metrics to identify visitors at risk of not returning. These skills let you offer a forecast expressed as a range with a stated margin, rather than a single confident guess.
How to Automate GA4 Reporting and Email Alerts So Performance Monitoring Runs Without You
- This module shows how to set up automatic monitoring in Google Analytics so problems surface on their own, without depending on anyone remembering to check the reports. You will explore why manual daily checks tend to lapse over time, how alerts, scheduled reports, and dashboard deliveries each serve a different monitoring need, and how to build a custom alert that emails you when a metric behaves unusually, choosing a threshold that fires rarely enough to stay trustworthy. These skills give you a monitoring setup that catches genuine issues promptly while avoiding the alert fatigue that makes over-eager notifications useless.