Which one is better for link tracking: Bitly or Google Analytics? It’s a common inquiry when marketers are ready to improve campaign performance. With the introduction of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the question grew even more complex. But the truth is that marketers are asking the wrong question.
Bitly is meant to be used with GA4, not in place of it. When you combine the two, you can go a couple of shades deeper into the analysis of your campaigns.
Bitly Campaign Management and Analytics is a complementary tracking tool where you can manage links on top of Google Analytics’ comprehensive analytics. Sound confusing? It’s not.
The real-time data from customizable dashboards give you a better idea of how to drive traffic and conversion rates. We’ll look at how the two function separately and why they really leap off the page when you pair them together.
Bitly vs. Google Analytics: A quick breakdown
With Bitly, you can customize links, adding parameters to separate channels and audiences before shortening them. This is the key to designing sleek campaigns with short URLs that point customers to the right digital asset.
Instead of a campaign link that’s 10 lines long, you can shorten and brand it with Bitly. You can then track link performance based on the parameters of each campaign.
With Google Analytics, marketers can collect even more data, including geographic data and engagement metrics. It’s a more fleshed-out look at a digital marketing campaign, showing you how customer behavior either helped or hurt your metrics.
One of the major differences between the two analytics tools is its timing. Bitly shows you an overview of campaigns in real time. Because GA4 is more complex by nature, its analytics can take longer. While you can see basic data in GA4 in real time, like active customers or page views, it takes around 24 hours to process anything more complex.
What’s more, running analysis on imported data or generating more complex reports can take up to 48 hours. As marketers already know, a lot can change in two days.
Using Bitly for analytics
Bitly shows you how content is performing, whether it’s shared directly by the brand or not. You can customize each campaign URL based on everything from the medium to the customer.
For instance, if you run the same campaign using five micro-influencers, you could see how that content was shared among each influencer and their followers. Link tracking through Bitly gives you fast ways to check in with your audience and gives you insights into how to create content that connects with them on a deeper level.
Using Google Analytics for analytics
Google Analytics provides a deeper analysis of where customers are and what patterns are driving campaign performance. For instance, you can see how geographic data or referral traffic affects your campaign metrics.
This is a tool to track conversions and determine the true efficacy of your marketing channels. While Bitly can give you the initial numbers, it’s Google Analytics that drill down into the behavioral patterns.
Top 3 benefits of using both tools simultaneously
Layering Bitly on top of Google Analytics is the best way to harness your data. We’ll look at why this is and how you can implement it into your campaigns.
1. Comprehensive link tracking and analytics
Combining Bitly and Google Analytics shows you both the immediate impact of a link and the nuances behind the engagement of each link. For instance, let’s say that you post a link on social media that lights up your target demographic immediately. You can tell from Bitly’s Dashboard that the link’s performance is strong.
Once the full data uploads in GA4, though, you notice that, despite the traffic surge, customers navigated off the page as quickly as they navigated to it. You can use this information to change the digital destination of the link, adjust the promotion, or switch marketing channels.
2. Enhanced campaign tracking
Marketers can deploy Bitly’s link tracking to gain valuable insight into the rest of the larger campaign. For instance, a brand might launch a social media marketing campaign across several platforms, using branded short links from Bitly alongside custom UTM parameters.
However, a brand needs to measure more than just click-through rates. By analyzing the website traffic and lead generation with GA4, they can determine which platforms were more effective at reaching which audiences.
3. Improved user journey analysis
When you integrate GA4 and Bitly together, you can map the full customer journey. Bitly shows you the content that’s driving immediate interest, allowing you to capitalize on everything from trending topics to flash sale promotions.
GA4 takes you deeper into the customer’s actions, showing marketers everything from website engagement to conversions. So if you know that you can pique a customer’s curiosity with an initial promotion but they’re unlikely to buy on the first tap, you can target the customer with a reminder ad.
Bitly and Google Analytics 4 together: How it works
You can think of Bitly as an instant snapshot of your link performance data, one that gives you a limited but important initial understanding of the campaign. Meanwhile, you can think of Google Analytics 4 as a more detailed portrait of what’s driving your campaign.
We’ll look at how the two data sets are inherently linked and why both are non-negotiables for better campaigns.
Real-time tracking with Bitly
When you set up real-time tracking with Bitly Campaigns, the system can immediately track each time someone clicks on a link. At Bitly, our team switches between Bitly and Google Analytics 4 for greater efficiency and transparency.
We use Bitly on a daily basis and refer to Google Analytics for more macro views like weekly and quarterly reporting on how each initiative impacts our bottom line. Bitly can track affiliate marketing, social media posts, email, QR Codes, product promos, event invites, reviews, and referrals.
Using Bitly’s Dashboard, our marketing team measured link performance on social media and adjusted accordingly throughout the day. For example, let’s say our eBook trended on LinkedIn. We would follow up by sharing similar content when we saw the most engagement.
In-depth analysis with Google Analytics
GA4 is the key to long-term data analysis, providing detailed and customizable reports to help marketers realize the full weight of each decision. Track conversions of your web page, get to the bottom of a dip in e-commerce, or verify whether your Google ads are helping your bottom line. In addition to dashboard metrics, you can run custom reports in GA4 that provide answers to your deeper questions.
While it may take up to 48 hours to compile and parse the data, it’s by far the best way to measure the overall impact of a campaign. Marketers can get a sense of how to balance the exciting with the every day, leading to campaigns that are equally valuable to the customer and brand.
Daily monitoring with Bitly
Bitly is used for daily monitoring and immediate strategy adjustments. For instance, let’s say you’re promoting a product when a minor celebrity endorses it of their own accord.
With Bitly, you can capitalize on the immediate buzz of the endorsement. Track everything from social media performance to email marketing and adjust content distribution to make the most of your link and campaign.
Macro view with Google Analytics
Marketers may strike gold right out of the gate with the right campaign, but unfortunately, they can’t always count on lightning-in-a-bottle moments. GA4 is the key to smarter campaigns that connect with the customer.
For broader, more strategic insights, marketers can pull weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports, studying the broader implications of their content and ad placements based on the scope and goals of the campaign.
Creating Bitly Links that work with GA4
Now that we know when to use Bitly and Google Analytics, it’s time to sync your data so every Bitly URL you create pulls into both your Bitly and Google Analytics dashboards. We’ll look at the basics of how this works.
1) Add UTM Parameters to your destination URL
The first thing is to add UTM parameters to your URL. You can either do that through our Campaign Builder or using Google’s URL builder. Not sure how to use UTMs? Google provides this handy UTM tag overview chart to get started:
Using Bitly’s user-friendly interface, you can run down the fields with the campaign information before automatically generating the long URL. Once it’s done, it should look something like this:
http://www.example.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=spring_sale
2) Clean it up with Bitly
To shorten the link in Bitly and remove all the messy UTM parameters, open the Bitly Dashboard and select Create new (or you and type B from anywhere in the interface).
From there, paste or enter your long URL into the Destination box and hit Enter. Bitly automatically converts your long URL into a short Bitly link with randomly generated letters and/or numbers after the backslash. From here, you can customize the short link by adding a Title or Custom back-half.
We recommend integrating your brand or campaign into the link, eliminating the randomness that can look unappetizing to a customer. For instance, you might add the words “Big Sale” to the custom back half to tie into the latest promotion.
3) Get it live
Now you’re ready to push the link live and see stats on Bitly and Google Analytics. You can now deploy the links on print materials, like brochures, flyers, or event invites (or use them alongside Bitly QR Codes). Share Bitly links across email campaigns, social media posts, and online ads. You can even add a Bitly link call to action (CTA) on radio ads and TV commercials.
Sometimes people notice a discrepancy between the numbers reported on Bitly and those on Google Analytics. Don’t fret if you see this!
Bitly records click data, while Google Analytics reports on page views and sessions. Google also samples data, while Bitly does not. In other words, Google will take a sample of your data and extrapolate that to estimate what it would be at 100%. With Bitly, you’ll see every tap in real time.
Use Bitly and Google Analytics together for the best results
Bitly and Google Analytics aren’t at odds with one another. They’re most effective when you use them in tandem, as they provide different data sets that ultimately work in harmony for marketers. This is a chance to see the meeting point between link performance, customer engagement, and overall campaign strategy.
With analytics data and link management tools, you can track your campaigns both during and after the launch. Integrating Google Analytics and Bitly means streamlining your workflow. Get instant notifications when links are clicked. Shorten links and infuse them with your brand.
Ready to see what all the fuss is about? Get started with Bitly and Google Analytics today!
