The essentials
- When: initial setup, an audit after an unexplained drop, e-commerce with a dataLayer, GDPR compliance, team training.
- Six skills: GA4, Google Tag Manager, consent, Google Ads, visualisation, teaching.
- Freelance or agency: a freelancer for a focused engagement (€500 to €3,000), an agency for ongoing or multi-tool support.
- Warning sign: a quote with no prior audit, or a report with no action plan.
GA4 is free, but configuring it, auditing it and making it readable takes skills few small businesses have in-house. A good consultant turns a property that "collects page views" into a decision-making tool; a bad one delivers a forty-page report and an invoice. Here is how to tell the difference before you sign.
When should you bring in a GA4 consultant?
- Initial setup, or taking over an account : key events, exclusions, links, retention. A day is often enough; see setting GA4 up properly.
- An audit when something looks wrong : a drop in traffic, inconsistent conversions, figures an agency disputes. See auditing a GA4 account.
- E-commerce : setting up the dataLayer and the transaction events, the most technical part.
- GDPR compliance : the banner, Consent Mode v2, documentation.
- Reporting : dashboards for your board or for clients.
- Training : making your team self-sufficient at reading the reports.
The six skills to check
| Skill | Why | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| GA4 in depth | Events, parameters, explorations, attribution | Ask for an anonymised example audit and its action plan |
| Google Tag Manager | Every custom conversion goes through GTM | Ask how they would track a phone click and a purchase |
| Consent and GDPR | Without Consent Mode v2, both your data and your compliance are incomplete | Ask where they stand on basic versus advanced mode |
| Google Ads | GA4 conversions feed the bidding | Ask how they handle GA4 / Google Ads discrepancies |
| Visualisation | The figures have to leave GA4 to get read | Ask for a dashboard they've delivered |
| Teaching | You have to understand what they're doing | Is the first conversation clear, without jargon? |
Google certifications (Google Analytics Certification, Google Ads) are a minimum, not proof: they take a few hours to obtain. Experience on sites comparable to yours (size, sector, CMS) counts for more.
Freelancer, agency or platform?
| Option | Strengths | Limits | Indicative budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelance consultant | Responsive, specialised, a clear day rate, a direct relationship | Availability, dependence on one person, scope limited to analytics | €500 to €900 / day; a typical engagement is 1 to 3 days |
| Agency | A multi-disciplinary team (SEO, SEA, data), continuity, long-term support | Cost, multiple contacts, the risk of subcontracting | €800 to €1,500 / day; monthly retainers of €500 to €2,000 |
| A management platform | Guided configuration, ready-made dashboards and alerts, low cost | No substitute for a bespoke audit or a complex dataLayer | €0 to €200 / month |
All three combine: a freelancer for the setup, a platform for day-to-day tracking, an agency if analytics sits within a wider SEO or SEA engagement. The price ranges are set out in what analytics support costs.
The ten questions to ask before signing
- Do you start with an audit of the existing property? (A quote with no audit is a quote made blind.)
- What deliverables will I receive, and in what form? (See the deliverables of a GA4 provider.)
- Will the GA4 account and the Tag Manager container remain my company's property?
- How do you document the events and parameters you create?
- How do you handle consent and Consent Mode?
- What are the normal discrepancies between GA4, Google Ads and my back office, and how will you explain them to my board?
- Who will actually work on my account?
- How long before I have reliable conversions?
- Do you train my team, and to what level?
- What happens at the end of the engagement: access, documentation, handover?
The warning signs
- A quote drawn up without having looked at your property.
- An audit delivered as a set of screenshots with no prioritised action plan.
- Accounts created in the provider's name.
- A promise to "measure everything": a measurement plan with 80 events is a sign of inexperience, not rigour.
- No question about your business objectives in the first conversation.
- A very low price for a "complete configuration": basic configuration takes an hour, a real measurement plan takes a day.
If you're still torn between delegating and doing it in-house, our guide building your teams' GA4 skills sets out the training formats, and choosing your analytics expert widens the question beyond GA4.
How GreenRed helps
Rather than juggling several tools, GreenRed's Traffic module brings these metrics together in a single dashboard, compares them over time and tells you which actions come first. You can try it free, with no card, from the Pricing.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a GA4 consultant cost?
Between €500 and €900 a day for an experienced freelancer in France, €800 to €1,500 at an agency. A complete configuration of a brochure site is a day's work, an audit with an action plan a day, an e-commerce setup with a dataLayer two to four days.
Do I need a Google-certified consultant?
The Google Analytics certification is a minimum, but it takes a few hours to obtain and guarantees no experience. Judge on example deliverables, references from sites comparable to yours, and the quality of the questions they ask in the first conversation.
Can a GA4 consultant also run Google Ads?
Some do, and the combination is useful, because GA4 conversions feed Google Ads bidding. Check, though, that analytics isn't a mere add-on to an advertising offer: a consultant optimising the campaigns they measure is both judge and party.
What should a GA4 audit from a consultant contain?
A state of play, control by control (configuration, collection, conversions, access, consent), the status of each point, the fix to apply, its priority and its owner. A one- to five-page action-focused document is worth more than a forty-page report full of screenshots.