Question from Reddit user:
Maybe a hot take but is GA4 still even useful in B2B SaaS? – I feel like everyone is mostly frustrated with getting it to work. – Top of funnel is shifting more and more to dark social. – I can use hubspot for tracking. – SEO is increasingly dead/irrelevant since the helpful content update last year.
When is it still useful in B2B SaaS and worth implementing ?
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
Yes, GA4 is still extremely useful in B2B SaaS, but not as a standalone reporting tool; its value lies in its event-based data model and its API access to export raw web behavior data.
You are right to be frustrated with the GA4 interface and the shift to dark social, but the solution isn’t to abandon it, but to leverage it as a centralized, free repository for collecting your comprehensive website engagement data.
It remains essential for measuring the full scope of your marketing efforts and is still the most efficient way to collect consistent user interaction data, which you can then combine with your CRM data (like HubSpot) to form a complete picture of the customer journey from the first click to a closed deal.
The long answer is:
Your “hot take” is a common sentiment, but the perceived issues are less about GA4’s utility and more about the evolution of data privacy and the limitations of its interface.
GA4’s usefulness in B2B SaaS is rooted in two main areas: unifying the customer journey and providing a centralized web data collection backbone.
First, while HubSpot is excellent for tracking known contacts, GA4 is the best tool for tracking the anonymous, top-of-funnel journey of users who haven’t converted yet.
By using its event-based model, you can set up custom events that precisely track key B2B micro-conversions, such as resource_download, pricing_page_view, and demo_video_watch, which are invisible to HubSpot.
This data, especially when integrated with your CRM, allows you to model the complete B2B customer path.
Second, to get past the frustrating GA4 interface, you need to stop thinking of it as your final reporting destination and instead view it as a raw data source.
This is where the Google Analytics Data API and the Looker Studio API become an excellent solution.
By using the Google Analytics Data API, you can programmatically extract your detailed, event-level data and pull it into a dedicated data analysis environment like BigQuery or even a simpler visualization tool like Looker Studio.
This bypasses the limiting reporting interface entirely.
To solve the dark social and shifting traffic issue, you can use Google Tag Manager combined with a server-side tagging environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
This allows you to implement tracking in a more privacy-compliant manner, while also providing the flexibility to capture custom identifiers and data points that help to bridge the gap between anonymous GA4 data and known CRM data.
For instance, after a known user logs in or a form is submitted, the server can pass a user_id or HubSpot identifier back to GA4, helping to stitch the anonymous and known journeys together.
The Looker Studio API then allows you to create custom, flexible dashboards that blend the raw behavioral data from the GA4 API with your HubSpot metrics, finally delivering the precise, attribution-based, funnel-focused reporting that the native GA4 interface simply cannot provide.
Therefore, GA4 is still worth implementing because it’s the most flexible and scalable platform for collecting the behavioral data that powers everything else.
About The Author
