Why Most Brisbane Business Owners are Flying Blind
I’ve sat down with a lot of business owners in Brisbane—from landscapers in Samford to boutique owners in Paddington— and they all usually have the same frustration. They’re spending money on a website, maybe some ads, and definitely a lot of time on social media. But when I ask, "Which of those things actually made the phone ring today?" most of them just shrug.
They have Google Analytics installed because someone told them they needed it, but when they log in, it looks like a cockpit of a jumbo jet. There are graphs, numbers, and weird terms like "GA4 events" everywhere.
If you’ve ever felt like your website is a black hole where money goes in and you’re not sure what comes out, this is for you. We’re going to talk about tracking what matters. Not "engagement rates" or "user sessions," but the actual actions that put money in your bank account: phone calls, form submissions, and bookings.
What is a "Custom Event" and Why Should You Care?
Forget the technical name for a second. In plain English, a "custom event" is just a way of telling Google, "Hey, pay attention! Someone just did something important."
By default, Google is pretty lazy. It tracks that someone landed on your page and that they left. That’s about it. It doesn’t automatically know that clicking the "Call Now" button on your mobile site is more important than someone just scrolling down to read your footer.
Setting up these events is how you stop guessing about your marketing. It’s the difference between saying "I had 500 visitors last month" and saying "I had 500 visitors, and 12 of them called for a quote, mostly coming from that Facebook post I did on Tuesday."
The "So What?" Factor
Why spend time on this?
1. Stop wasting money: If you’re paying for ads but they only lead to people reading your blog and not calling you, you’re burning cash. Tracking shows you where to stop spending. 2. Do more of what works: If you see that your Google My Business profile is sending three times more leads than your expensive SEO, you know where to put your energy. 3. Hold your "marketing person" accountable: If you’re paying an agency, don't let them show you fancy graphs of "traffic." Ask them for a report on "conversions" (the calls and clicks).
The Three Big Things Every Local Business Should Track
You don’t need to track everything. In fact, tracking too much is a great way to get overwhelmed and give up. For most Brisbane tradies and professional services, you only need to track three specific things.
1. Phone Number Clicks
Most of your customers are looking at your site on a phone while they’re on the go. If they click your phone number to call you, you want to know about it. This is the gold standard of leads. It’s someone ready to talk right now.2. Contact Form Submissions
When someone fills out your "Request a Quote" or "Contact Us" form, that’s a high-intent lead. You need to know exactly which page they were on when they decided to reach out.3. Button Clicks (The Important Ones)
Do you have a "Book Now" button? Or a "Download Price List" button? These are indicators that someone is moving closer to buying from you.How Much Does This Cost?
If you do it yourself, it costs you time. If you’re tech-savvy, you can probably bumble through it in a few hours. However, for most business owners, your time is better spent on the tools or meeting clients.
To have a professional set up fixing your website tracking properly usually costs a few hundred dollars as a one-off fee. It shouldn’t be a massive monthly expense. If someone is charging you $500 a month just to "monitor your analytics," they’re likely taking you for a ride unless they are actively using that data to change your ads every week.
How Long Until You See Results?
Data isn't magic. It won't get you more customers tomorrow, but it will give you the information to get more customers next month.
Usually, you need about 30 days of data to see a pattern. For example, you might notice that people from Chermside tend to fill out your form, but people from the Gold Coast just click the phone number. That’s a massive insight for how you talk to people in your ads.
A Beginner’s Guide to Setting This Up (The Simple Way)
I’m not going to bore you with code. Here is the high-level process of how we set this up for our clients at Local Marketing Group.
Step 1: Use Google Tag Manager
Think of Google Tag Manager (GTM) as a middleman. Instead of messing with your website's code every time you want to track something, you put GTM on your site once. Then, you tell GTM what to look for. It’s much safer and won’t break your site.Step 2: Define the "Trigger"
A trigger is just the "action." For a phone call tracking, the trigger is: "Someone clicked a link that starts with 'tel:'". For a form, the trigger is: "Someone landed on the 'Thank You' page after hit submit."Step 3: Create the "Event" in GA4
Once the trigger happens, GTM sends a message to Google Analytics 4. You give it a simple name likephone_call_click.
Step 4: Mark it as a "Conversion"
This is the most important step. In GA4, you go to your list of events and toggle a switch that says "Mark as conversion." This tells Google, "This isn't just a click; this is a win!"Common Mistakes (And Why You're Probably Wasting Money)
I’ve looked under the hood of hundreds of Brisbane business accounts, and most are a mess. Here’s what usually goes wrong:
Tracking "Page Views" as Success: Just because 1,000 people looked at your homepage doesn't mean your marketing is working. If none of them called, your website is just a digital brochure that no one cares about. Not Filtering Out Your Own Office: If you and your staff visit your website ten times a day, you’re skewing your data. You need to tell Google to ignore your own IP address so you’re only looking at real potential customers.
- Ignoring the "Thank You" Page: The easiest way to track a form is to have it redirect to a page that says "Thanks, we'll call you soon." Tracking hits on that page is 100% accurate. Many people try to track the "Submit" button, but sometimes that button gets clicked even if the form has an error, giving you false hope.
What Should You Do First?
Don't try to be a data scientist. If you’re just starting, do this one thing: Set up tracking for your main contact button.
Whether it’s a phone number or a quote form, just track that one thing. Once you see those numbers appearing in your reports, you’ll suddenly feel a lot more in control of your business growth. You’ll start to see why people don't call and you can actually fix it.
Real World Example: The Morningside Plumber
We worked with a local plumber who was spending $2,000 a month on Google Ads. He was getting plenty of clicks, but he didn't feel like he was getting enough jobs.
We set up custom events to track his "Emergency Call Out" button versus his "General Enquiry" form. We found out that 90% of his ad budget was going to people clicking his "General Enquiry" form during the day, but they never actually booked. However, the few clicks he got at night on the "Emergency" button turned into high-paying jobs every single time.
By seeing this data, he shifted his budget to only run ads at night and on weekends. He spent half the money and doubled his actual profit. That’s the power of tracking the right things.
Is it Worth Doing Yourself?
Look, I’ll be honest with you. If you enjoy tinkering with computers and have a spare Saturday, you can watch some YouTube videos and get this done.
But if the thought of "tags" and "triggers" makes your eyes glaze over, just hire someone to do it. It’s a foundational piece of your business. If your tracking is wrong, every decision you make about your marketing will be based on a lie.
Most of what you read online about GA4 is written for people who sit in offices all day. For a Brisbane small business owner, you just need to know if your money is working.
Summary of Your Action Plan
1. Check if you have GA4: If you’re still using the old version of Google Analytics, it stopped working months ago. Get the new one. 2. Pick your "Wins": Decide on the 2 or 3 actions that mean a customer is interested. 3. Set up the events: Use Google Tag Manager to track those actions. 4. Review monthly: Don't look at it every day. Look once a month and ask: "Where did my best leads come from?"
Stop letting your marketing be a guessing game. When you know exactly what makes the phone ring, you can stop worrying about "algorithms" and start focusing on serving your customers.
Ready to stop wondering if your website is actually working?
At Local Marketing Group, we help Brisbane businesses cut through the fluff and get real results. We can set up your tracking properly so you know exactly where your next customer is coming from.
Contact us today and let's get your business growing with data you can actually understand.