A practical guide for GA4 and GTM in healthcare marketing

In healthcare and pharma marketing, understanding how patients and HCPs interact with your website or digital platform is critical. From tracking appointment bookings to understanding which content supports patient education, a strong analytics setup allows you to make informed, data driven decisions.

At Varn Health, we support clients in the health, pharma, medical devices and wellness sectors to implement and refine best-practice tracking using Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (GTM). Below, we share practical insights from the training we deliver, tailored for healthcare organisations looking to improve digital performance with clarity and control.

GA4 is Google’s latest analytics platform, that gives you more flexibility to track behaviour across websites, apps, and devices. Importantly for healthcare marketers, it’s built with privacy in mind and allows for more granular consent and data handling, helping you meet regulatory obligations.

With GA4, you can:

• Monitor how users arrive on your site; from organic search, paid campaigns, directories, or referral sites
• Track meaningful user actions, such as appointment bookings, information downloads, and form submissions
• Set up custom reporting aligned to your marketing goals or service KPIs
• Use GA4 alongside GTM and Google Search Console for a clearer picture of search visibility and patient engagement
• Share real time insights with internal teams or external stakeholders to guide decision-making

Once GA4 is correctly set up, knowing where to find the data that matters is key. GA4 offers a series of pre-built reports that can be adapted to your specific context.

Key report types include:

• Real-Time: See how many users are active right now, and which pages or content they’re viewing
• Acquisition: Understand how people are discovering your site, for example maybe through NHS listings, search, email campaigns, etc.
• Engagement: Measure how long users spend on key pages like service overviews, FAQs, or appointment guides
• Retention: See whether users are returning to your site for follow up information
• User: Get anonymised insights into your audience’s location, device type etc.

GA4’s “Explore” section is particularly useful if you want to dig deeper, for example to analyse behaviour on condition-specific landing pages or compare engagement across service types.

Note: GA4 often takes 24–48 hours to process data fully so you need to factor this in when reviewing performance.

GTM allows you to implement tracking for specific interactions without having to alter your website code each time. That means faster updates, better collaboration with developers, and more agility for your marketing team.

GTM works through:

• Tags: Send data to GA4 when users take an action e.g. when someone downloads a health guide or starts an e-consultation form
• Triggers: Define when those tags should fire; such as when a “Book Appointment” button is clicked
• Variables: Add useful detail, like which service the action relates to or which device it was on

Healthcare marketers can use this setup to track actions that signal intent or engagement; even when those actions aren’t captured by default in GA4.

After installing the GTM container (often done by your web developer), you can set up and test tags in the GTM interface. For example:

1. Create a tag (e.g. GA4 event: “Appointment Booking Started”)
2. Set a trigger (e.g. click on the “Start Consultation” button)
3. Add variables (e.g. service type or clinic location)
4. Use Preview Mode to test everything works as intended
5. Publish the container once verified

Helpful browser tools for testing:

• Tag Assistant
• DataLayer Checker Plus
• GA Debugger

These help ensure your events are being recorded correctly and show you what data is being passed.

Many healthcare websites focus on building trust, educating patients, and simplifying access to services. You can track key conversion and engagement points, such as:

• Clicks on “Book Now”, “Call Us”, or “Check Symptoms” buttons
• Downloads of guides, leaflets, or consent forms
• Online registration for new patient accounts
• Completion of health risk assessments or surveys
• Interactions with NHS service finder integrations
• Engagement with wellbeing content or video explainers

With increased regulation around personal data, particularly in healthcare, it’s vital that your analytics setup respects user consent.

Google’s Consent Mode V2 allows each tag to be configured according to the type of consent provided (analytics, advertising, personalisation, etc.).

In GTM, you can:

• Specify the required consent level for each tag
• Use the Consent tab in GTM Preview mode to check how tags respond to user choices
• Prevent tags from firing until the correct consent has been obtained

If a user declines consent, GA4 can still gather high-level, non-identifiable data through cookieless pings, providing a basic level of insight. GA4 also offers behavioural modelling, which uses machine learning to estimate user activity; ideal for maintaining visibility while respecting privacy.

To use behavioural modelling, your GA4 setup must:

• Apply consent mode site-wide
• Load tags before the consent prompt appears
• Generate a reasonable volume of events from both consenting and non-consenting users

As cookies become less reliable due to browser changes and consent frameworks, healthcare marketers must look for alternative ways to maintain insight. Cookieless tracking in GA4 is one option, but server-side tagging offers a more advanced solution.

With server-side tagging, user interaction data is processed on a secure server rather than directly in the browser. This gives healthcare organisations more control over:

• What data is collected
• How it is anonymised or transformed
• Where and how it’s shared

This is particularly valuable for websites handling sensitive medical information or those operating under strict regulatory environments.

Benefits of server-side tagging include:

• Greater data control and compliance, which is essential for healthcare and NHS-linked organisations
• Reduced data loss due to ad blockers or privacy-focused browsers
• More accurate tracking, even for lower-traffic sites where GA4’s modelling thresholds may not be met

Whether you’re setting up tracking from scratch or fine tuning an existing configuration, GA4 and GTM can provide healthcare marketers with the tools to measure what matters, from user journeys and service demand to patient content engagement.

At Varn Health, our Data & Analytics team work closely with healthcare brands to implement effective tracking systems that support both healthcare compliance and performance.

If you’d like to discuss your current data tracking setup or want help exploring server-side tagging, get in touch. We’d be happy to help you make sense of your data.