The Google Ads Conversion Tracking Guide

The Guide to Google Ads Conversion Tracking

In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, it is vitally important that you track key metrics in your campaign so you can gauge performance, and ultimately, determine if your campaign is a success. Google Ads conversion tracking offers advertisers the perfect metric in this regard, as conversions are the overarching goal for virtually every PPC campaign.

In this article, we’ll explore Ads conversion tracking in detail, helping you understand how it works, why you should use it, and best of all, how you can get the most out of it to improve your campaign.

What is Google Ads Conversion Tracking?

Conversion tracking is a performance measuring tool that is integrated into Google Ads, (formerly known as AdWords). This free feature tracks user clicks that lead on to conversions.

Conversions are specific actions by users that are considered valuable to your business. There are many types of conversions, including:

• Website actions – Purchases, sign-ups, downloads, and other actions completed by visitors on your website.
• Phone calls – Calls directly from your ads, calls to a phone number on your website and clicks on a phone number on your mobile website.
• App installs and in-app actions – Installs of your Android or iOS mobile apps. Within app actions and purchases.
• Local actions – Actions that are counted whenever people interact with an ad that’s specific to a physical location or store.

How Does Google Ads Conversion Tracking Work?

This process begins when you define a conversion goal in your Google Ads account. Once you have set the desired conversion action, such as a purchase or phone call, you can start tracking data.

With the Ads conversion tracking tool, you can record engagement data for visitors after they click on your ad. Through Google Analytics, you can map the customer journey after the initial click, and learn more about user intent from users’ actions after a specific keyword entices them to click on your PPC ad.

With the data generated by the Ads conversion tracking tool, you can gain actionable insights about aspects of your campaign that need optimization, such as your ad copy, keywords or bids.

How to Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking

To get started with Ads conversion tracking, first of all, you need a website. When you have that, you can start tracking conversions by taking the following steps:

1. Choose the source of conversion.
2. Create a conversion action.
3. Customize the tracking options.
4. Install the conversion tracking code.

Let’s explore each step in detail.

First of all, click on the “Tools and Settings” icon in the Google Ads interface and select the conversions from the dropdown.

1. Choose the Source of Conversion

Where will conversions happen? You must determine the source, which may be one of the following:

• Webpage – If you need customers to make a purchase, you can set the checkout page or purchase completed page as the source. Alternatively, you may set a specific product page or contact form submission page as the source.
• Phone Calls – This is for when you’re tracking calls to your business through PPC ads.
• App Downloads – If you want more customers to download your app.

2. Create a Conversion Action

In PPC advertising, purchases are the most popular type of conversion action to track. If you want to see the impact your paid ads are having on your online sales volume, adjust the settings as follows:

• Change ‘Category’ to “Purchase/Sale”.
• Change the value to “Use different values for each conversion”.
• Click “Create”, and then “Continue”.

3. Customize Conversion Tracking Options

Google Ads allows you to customize how you track conversions in several ways. Here are your options:

• Name – Create a unique name for your conversion to make it easy to identify from other conversions in your Ads account.
• Value – Assign a set amount to your conversion.
• Count – Will you count all unique conversions or just the total number of conversions? When you set it to unique, Google Ads won’t register repeated actions from the same user as multiple conversions.
• Conversion Window – This is the retention limit that Google Ads considers when tracking user journeys. For example, let’s say you set this value to ’30 days’. If a single user makes the conversion action twice in that period, both actions will be registered as conversions.
• Category – Identify your conversion action as a lead, a purchase, a sign-up, etc.

After setting and selecting the options, click on create and continue.

4. Setting Up the Conversion Tracking Tag

The last of the four key steps is the trickiest, so we’ll cover it in more detail.

After creating a conversion action, you’ll get a code snippet, known as a conversion tracking tag. You need to add this to your website to be able to start tracking. This tag records engagement data, allowing you to see whenever a user click leads to a conversion.

There are three ways of setting up the conversion tracking tag:

        1. Install the tag yourself

It’s easier than you think to set things up yourself. Just do this:

1. Review your settings – Make sure everything is configured correctly for your campaign, including the conversion goal, values, and customization options. If any changes are needed, click ‘Edit Settings’ and make the required changes.
2. (Optional) Track conversions on a page load or click – Under the “Install your tag” option, you can choose one of the following options:
3. Page load – The default option that registers conversion whenever users load a new page, such as the confirmation page for an email sign-up or purchase.
4. Click – Register a conversion whenever users click on a specific link or button.
5. Save tag – Scroll to the bottom of the gray box that includes the conversion tag, then select “Save instructions and tag”.
6. Click “Done” – Now, you have the conversion tracking tag saved, and you can paste it into the header tag in your website.

        II. Email the tag to a webmaster

If you’re not as tech-savvy to feel confident with playing with your website code, it may be better to give the job to someone else who is more experienced.

They can follow the steps above to get the code, or perhaps you can do that and then email the tracking tag code to your webmaster, and give them the authority to install the tag on your website.

        III. Google Ads Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management system that enables users to quickly update code fragments – known as tags – on their website or mobile app. When you have GTM set up on your website, it can dramatically improve page load speed.

To set up tags in GTM, first, go to the Google Tag Manager site, and sign in. After that, follow the steps below to set up a new tracking tag.

• Select “New tag” in the user interface.
• When presented with the options, select “Tag configuration”.

• Choose Google Analytics in the Tag configuration window.

• Set your variable settings, then save it.
• In the dropdown menu, select the variable you have created. If you want, you can also override the pre-defined settings of the variables you created.
• Close the tag configuration window.
• Select the “Triggering”
• When the window opens, choose the trigger pages (i.e. the website pages on which your Tag will be triggered).

• Click “Save”, then name your tag.

Now that you’re finished, you can use this tracking tag on your website.

Analyzing Conversion Data in Google Ads

After you have fully configured conversion tracking on your website, you can track the data as traffic arrives. Just go into your Ads account and check the “Converted Clicks” column.

If you have correctly installed the conversion tracking code, and people are converting on your site, then you will be able to see data populating here.

It’s easy to customize your interface depending on which columns you would like to be displayed. Here are some key metrics to consider including:

• Converted Clicks – This is the total number of clicks that resulted in conversions. This correlates to the number of leads generated by your ads.
• Cost Per Click Leading to Conversion – The average cost for every click that leads to a conversion.
• Click Conversion Rate – The percentage of clicks that resulted in conversions. In effect, this is how often your site visitors become customers.
• View-through Conversion – The number of times users viewed your ad, didn’t click on it, but then later became a customer through another channel.

To see more detailed information about your conversions, you can view data at the Campaign, Ad Group, Ad, and Keyword levels. Each of these provides deeper data insights to help optimize your account.

5 Benefits of Ads Conversion Tracking

So, why should you go to this hassle? Is it really worth it?

In a word:

Absolutely.

Here are five reasons why you should be using Ads conversion tracking.

1. You Can Make Profitable Advertising Decisions

Data provides the information you need to make smarter business decisions. With conversion tracking, you can identify settings that lead to conversions and all-around better campaign performance. The more you know, the more informed you will be, which is good news for your budget.

2. Determine Top-Performing Keywords

It’s not always easy to discover valuable keywords that deliver a high return on investment (ROI). However, when you are tracking conversions and studying the customer journey through every digital touchpoint, you will soon figure out which keywords are working for your business.

You can track key parameters like:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Conversions
• Cost

Over time, as you gather more data, you’ll develop a holistic overview of your traffic, and you’ll be able to refine your keyword list. By cutting out the low-performers, and bidding more on the high-value terms, you’ll soon see that ROI rise.

3. Optimize Your Ad copy

PPC advertising involves a lot of trial and error. This is particularly true when it comes to your ad copy – you can’t just create one and hope it’s a winner!

By split-testing multiple versions of your ad with different ad copy, you can test out different ideas, voices, and calls-to-action (CTA). Data-driven marketing makes it easy to split-test ideas and analyze the results.

Tracking the conversions for each ad version will soon reveal which ad copy is the most potent. As you continue this tweaking and testing, you can optimize each element of your ad copy, from the headline to the description to the CTA.

4. Provide a Smoother User Experience

The user experience (UX) is a big deal nowadays. People won’t hang around on websites that frustrate or confuse them. Therefore, advertisers need to consider things like load speeds, mobile-friendliness, and content relevance when creating ads and landing pages.

You may have the best product in the world, but if your UX is poor, people won’t stick around long enough to find out more. Your bounce rate will soar, and if that happens, your quality score will plummet, and you will spend more money.

By utilizing conversion tracking, you can identify areas that may hamper the UX. Work on improving these to provide a smooth journey from click to conversion. Ultimately, relevance, speed, and user-friendly navigation go a long way to securing that coveted conversion goal.

5. Historical Benchmark

Google Ads conversion tracking is like a large archive for conversion data, and over time, you can collect months or years’ worth of information on user behaviors. This is invaluable for future campaigns, particular if you hire a PPC expert or agency that knows how to tap into the potential of data-driven marketing.

Here are a few ways this historical data can come in handy:

        I. It helps to determine the right Cost per Conversion (CPC)

When assessing ROI, the price you pay for a single conversion is a good measure of success. Whatever your conversion goal is, whether it’s a purchase, a download, or a social share, it will have tangible value to your business.

Obviously, some conversion actions are more valuable than others. A car sales business will place more value on a request to view a car than they will for a simple email sign-up.

By using conversion tracking, we can assign values that are equal to the amount you need to spend to get that specific conversion.

        II. Bidding Optimization

Conversion tracking helps us understand how effective our bidding strategies are in PPC advertising. By keeping tabs on campaign performance, you’ll get a clear picture of the relationship between conversions and keyword costs.

By analyzing the data for patterns in keyword performance, it’s possible to hone in on the best keywords and adjust your bids accordingly. Furthermore, you’ll also discover keywords that are attracting unqualified users. By adding these to your campaign as a ‘negative keyword’, you will filter out irrelevant traffic, thus saving on wasted spend.

        III. Remarketing

Remarketing is a powerful way of connecting with people who already visited your website or mobile app. By leveraging data insights about their behaviors during their visit, you can retarget them with tailored ads, which you can strategically place on Google’s Display network.

This strategy is a highly effective way of increasing brand awareness, and can also drive conversions as users are more likely to convert after they encounter your brand several times.

4 Tips for Efficient Conversion Tracking

There’s certainly a lot to consider with PPC advertising, and Google Ads conversion tracking does involve a certain commitment if you are going to use it to maximize your ROI.

Here are a few tips to unlock the potential of this tool.

1. Identify Your Top Conversion Paths

Quite often, marketers think the last touchpoint in the customer journey is the only one that matters. If you consider the whole journey to conversion, you’ll find that there are several crucial steps along the way that play a significant role in persuading a user to convert.

A typical customer journey could involve:

• The first visit to your site where the user browses different categories and products.
• Interaction on your Facebook page.
• Watching videos on your site or social media channels.

These low-value conversions may be spread out over days, weeks, or even months. However, they are all part of the bigger conversion process, which is something you can piece together when you are using conversion tracking.

With Google Analytics, you’ll be able to identify actions on all channels, and then you can join the dots to create accurate attribution models that help you get a better understanding of the customer journey.

2. Create Audience Segments For Reporting & Ad Targeting

As you collect more data, you can experiment with segmentation. This process of creating niche groups within your wider audience is a great way to increase personalization in your marketing.

By grouping similar users together based on demographics, interests, browsing behaviors, and purchasing habits, you can tailor your marketing and ads to boost engagement.

As you continue to segment your audience into smaller, more defined subsects, you will offer a higher level of personalization and customer service, virtually to the point of a 1:1 conversation with every customer.

3. Categorize Conversions Appropriately

It’s vital that you select the right category for each conversion. In the settings, take care to ensure that you have configured the appropriate category type, whether it’s a lead, sign-up, purchase, etc.

This makes it easier to track data accurately, so you can identify problems in your marketing funnel, and optimize these issues to greater effect.

4. Configure Tag Sequencing

If you need tags to load in a specific order, you can use Tag sequencing in Google Tag Manager. With this setting, you can schedule other tags to fire in a customized order. This is useful because it allows us to analyze each individual action, and see how it impacts customer engagement on your web pages.

Wrap Up

For many small businesses, Google Ads is the primary channel for driving traffic to their website. As you pay for every single click that results in a visit, it’s imperative to assess what happens after the click. It’s no good if all those users bounce off your website shortly after arriving.

PPC advertising can quickly become an expensive endeavor if you don’t see any return on your advertising spend (ROAS). Therefore, analyzing key metrics is an integral aspect of a successful PPC strategy.

By using Google Ads conversion tracking, you will be able to evaluate data for patterns in user behaviors and gain actionable insights that help you optimize your campaign at every level.

To tap into the raw potential of the data-driven age, link Google Ads and Google Analytics, and then make conversion tracking a top priority. Before long, you’ll know more about your customers, and how to connect with them. Over time, you can build genuine wisdom that makes you a better marketer, and a more successful PPC advertiser.

Source: ppcexpo.com