Last week, I sat down with a local business owner in Fortitude Valley who was frustrated. He had Google Analytics 4 (GA4) installed, but to him, it looked like a cockpit of a Boeing 747—lots of flashing lights, but he had no idea if the plane was actually flying toward profit.
"I see people visiting the site," he said, "but I can't tell which marketing dollar actually bought my lunch today."
He isn't alone. Most Australian SMBs have GA4 running, but few are using it to drive decisions. In 2026, the businesses winning the Brisbane market aren't the ones with the most traffic; they are the ones who have fixed their data blindspots and turned their analytics into a profit engine.
Here are three quick wins you can implement this afternoon to stop guessing and start growing.
1. The 'Enhanced Measurement' Trap: Why You Need Custom Events
Out of the box, GA4 tracks basic things: page views, scrolls, and outbound clicks. But for a local service business—say, a plumber in Chermside or a law firm in the CBD—a 'scroll' doesn't pay the bills. A phone call or a form submission does.The Quick Win: Don't rely on GA4's automatic tracking. Go into your Admin panel and ensure your 'Thank You' page visits are marked as Conversions.
Example: A local boutique gym was seeing 2,000 visitors a month but only two 'conversions'. When we looked closer, GA4 wasn't tracking their 'Book a Trial' button because it opened in a pop-up. By setting up a custom event, they realised their Facebook ads were actually performing 400% better than they thought. They weren't failing; they were just flying blind. Identifying these gaps is the first step toward measuring ROI accurately.
2. Kill the 'Referral Ghost' with Unwanted Referrals
Have you ever looked at your traffic and seen a massive spike frompay.nab.com.au or cba.com.au? It looks like the banks are suddenly obsessed with your website. In reality, this is 'referral exclusion' failure.
When a customer goes to pay via a bank gateway and returns to your site, GA4 thinks the bank sent you the lead, stripping the credit away from the actual source (like your Google Search or Email campaign).
The Quick Win:
1. Go to Data Streams > Configure Tag Settings.
2. Click Show All and find List Unwanted Referrals.
3. Add your payment gateway domains (e.g., stripe.com, paypal.com, or your bank's portal).
This simple 5-minute fix ensures your marketing budget gets the credit it deserves, providing a practical blueprint for where to reinvest your next dollar.
3. Use 'Library' to Build a Dashboard That Actually Matters
GA4’s standard reports are cluttered. If you’re a business owner, you don’t need to see 15 different tables about 'Device Category' every morning. You need a 'Pulse Report'.The Quick Win: Use the Library feature (at the bottom of the Reports menu) to create a custom collection.
Step 1: Create a new report focusing only on Traffic Acquisition and Conversion Rate. Step 2: Filter it to show your top 5 converting suburbs in South East Queensland.
- Step 3: Save it to your side navigation.
Data is Only Useful if it Leads to Action
GA4 isn't a storage unit for numbers; it's a GPS. If you aren't using it to decide which ad to turn off or which page to rewrite, it's just digital clutter. By fixing your conversion tracking, cleaning up your referral data, and simplifying your view, you move from 'having data' to 'having insights'.Are you tired of looking at dashboards that don't make sense? At Local Marketing Group, we help Brisbane businesses cut through the noise and find the profit hidden in their data.
Contact us today to audit your GA4 setup and start making data-led decisions.