Conversion tracking is vital when utilizing Google Ads or any digital marketing tool for your business. You may have launched your Google Ads campaign and realized you have no idea what type of return you’re getting or want to ensure you set up conversion tracking before investing in digital advertising.
In this post, we discuss the two different types of Google Ads accounts you can create and which one is optimal for conversion tracking, how to track conversions, how tracking conversions can help optimize your automated bidding strategies, and how conversion data allows you to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Google Ads (Switch to Expert Mode)
When walking clients through creating their Google Ads account to share access with them, a Google Ad campaign manager at Three29 will request them to click “Switch to Expert Mode.” Switching to expert mode is the second step to creating your account after visiting ads.google.com and getting started.
Without switching to expert mode, you create a Smart campaign. Google made this type of campaign to help business owners who are not experts to get their ads up and running. This account type, however, is limited by the settings you can set up and conversion tracking.
Moreover, Google has more control over Smart campaigns and we’ve seen a lower ROI because of this. This is mainly due to the fact that Google cannot know your business as well as a Google Ads Specialist can after talking with you and learning how best to show your ads to the correct demographic.
In short, if you are serious about tracking your efforts, consider switching to expert mode.
Importing Conversions into your Account
Hover over the header menu inside your Google Ads account and click Tools and Setting > Measurement > Conversions. You will see your conversion action or have the option to add new ones in this section.
When it comes to adding and importing new conversion actions, there are multiple options, and no way is better or worse than the other. For example, most people generally import their conversion via linking their Google Analytics (GA) account since they already use it for website analytics tracking. Moreover, we import some of our conversions directly from software we use, such as call tracking.
Whatever way you and your digital advertising manager choose to import conversion actions, you’ll have to implement code snippets to the backend of your website or landing page to be able to track events. We typically create a Google Tag Manager (GTM) container and implement the code snippet it generates onto the site. From there, you can add multiple code snippets to GTM directly without having to paste new code to the backend of your website every time.
Automated Bidding Strategies Optimized For Conversions
Not only are you able to track specific actions you want people to take on your website, but Google Ads can optimize your campaign to generate more of those actions with conversion tracking enabled. When you run a campaign, you’ll select a bidding strategy.
These strategies are split into two groups, manual and automated. Once your account has generated enough conversions and data around them, an automated bidding strategy, such as Maximize Conversions, can drastically improve your campaign’s performance. Essentially, Google Ads will spend your budget looking to generate as many conversions as possible.
Measuring ROI and CAC from your Google Ads Efforts
Ultimately, conversion tracking is essential because it allows you to measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns and the return on investment (ROI) it generates for your business. With this type of tracking system in place, you’ll easily be able to tell that you spent $4,000 in Google Ads advertising last month, generating 150 inbound phone calls from leads and $10,000 in revenue.
Furthermore, you’ll learn other crucial indicators, such as your customer acquisition cost (CAC). CAC can be calculated by dividing the cost spent on acquiring customers by the number of customers acquired in a period of time. For example, if the CAC from the digital campaigns are 30% lower than traditional campaigns, you’ll know where to allocate more of your advertising budget.
Three29 is a Data-Driven Digital Agency
At Three29, we help business owners succeed with their digital campaigns by first meeting with our clients to gain as much knowledge about their business and to understand who is their target demographic. We then build campaigns around the goals of the client and then start to collect data and use it to optimize their Google Ads accounts. Conversion tracking and software are integrated into our Google Ads management services, and we set everything up before launching so that our clients can see the performance and can measure their return on investment.
If you would like to discuss conversion tracking for your digital campaigns and have our agency’s digital marketing specialists look into your existing accounts, or you would like an experienced Google Ad campaign manager to set up a new account, please contact us here. We look forward to speaking with you.
