Measure Your Success on Adwords

Marketing Without Measurement is a Waste of Resources

Recently we have been taking over or reviewing a lot of Google AdWords accounts for Audiology customers. I was surprised to see the way these accounts were set up in relation to tracking campaigns and reporting. In essence they weren't, none of the accounts we have looked at were set up to track on-site conversions nor were they set up to send reports. 

Why bother spend money if you are not going to measure the impact of that spend? It is easy to set conversion goals within Google AdWords, you can either set them up or import them from your Google Analytics account, so why wouldn't you? Let's talk about conversions for a minute. 

What is a Conversion?

Let me be clear on what we call a conversion, when we build a site we set up a submission process on that site, an enquiry form or a booking form. When someone submits an enquiry or looks to book an appointment, we class that as an on-site conversion. We track those submissions in Google Analytics (GA) by setting them up as goals. 

We also track visits to the contact us page of every site, we do so because that is an interest conversion. They didn't go to the page because it was pretty, they went there to gather some information about contacting the business. Again, we set that up as a goal in GA and track it. 

Why we Track Them

A visit to your site is not a conversion, we all understand that, an on-site submission of an enquiry or a visit to your contact page is most definitely a conversion. On-site submissions are outstanding for us, because they are trackable and a proof of concept for our services. However, the contact page goal also allows us to show we are driving interest for the business. 

Some of our customers are excellent at tracking source of enquiry and give us great feedback on phone enquiries driven by the website, some aren't. Tracking the contact page gives us an idea of the real conversion rate of the site. 

Tracking in GA

So you know that a visit to your site is not a conversion, so why are you happy being told what the click through rate is on your AdWords campaigns? Exactly of what use to you is that information? All it tells you is that it got visitors to your site, it doesn't tell you what happened with those visitors. 

If you link your Adwords and Analytics accounts, you can track data that tells you exactly what happened when people clicked through to your website and more importantly how many took a conversion action. You need this data to really understand how effective your campaign is and how good your landing page is and indeed how good your site is. The data available includes conversions, cost per conversion, bounce rate, unique visitors and pages viewed which you can see below. This information allows you to understand the engagement on site. 

Without it you are wasting time and money

If someone is managing your AdWords accounts, tell them that you want the data that matters. Make sure that conversion goals are set up in Google Analytics and get Adwords and Analytics linked. Then import the conversion goals and set up the proper reports that allow you to see all the data. Then, you will really be able to measure your return on investment.