Monitoring conversions on AdWords

[G. Lasagne]

Hi everyone

im trying to get back in to google AdWords and I’m currently spending £400 -£600 per month.
My question is how do I know if it’s working?
I want users to either call or sign up to one of our service plans. I have no idea whether customers are coming from AdWords or organic search. Would setting up a dedicated landing page that can only be found via AdWords be a good idea? Or is there a way to track a users path ie what pages they visit, any advice appreciated

 

[StephenSumner]

Google Ads has the functionality to allow tracking of conversions on your site like a thank you page, it doesn't need to be made specifically for Google Ads either. You can also set-up call tracking from Google Ads too, but probably neither of these are straight forward to set-up if you are a little rusty or not familiar with that part of Google Ads.

 

[G. Lasagne]

Google Ads has the functionality to allow tracking of conversions on your site like a thank you page, it doesn't need to be made specifically for Google Ads either. You can also set-up call tracking from Google Ads too, but probably neither of these are straight forward to set-up if you are a little rusty or not familiar with that part of Google Ads.

Thanks, I have a thank you page on the website already so I can set this up to see how many times it’s shown?

 

[StephenSumner]

You would set it up as a specific conversion inside the Adwords account and then place the appropriate code on the site, once you start getting conversions this data will show-up inside the Adwords account so you can then work out a proper ROI on your adspend.

 

[Ewan Kennedy]

I see you have Google Tag Manager (GTM) tracking code installed on your site. Presumably you have a Google Analytics (GA) account which is being updated by a Google Analytics tag in your GTM container. You could use GTM to set up tags to track the events you want to capture (calls, sign-ups etc.). Those events will appear in your GA account. Then set up goals in GA to correspond with those events. You can then import those goals from GA into Google Ads for use as conversions. The great thing about doing it that way is that you'll be able to see in GA all your conversions i.e. from whichever source, not just Google Ads. Then you'll know what conversions you're getting from other channels eg organic, social, direct etc.

 

[StephenSumner]

The above from Ewan works, but won't include call tracking as that bit has to be done inside Google Ads.

 

[Ewan Kennedy]

Agreed, Stephen.

 

[Alan]

As mentioned tracking online conversion is the simple part - set up conversion events in Adwords, you can even simply link this to goals in Google Analytics.

Can tracking is more difficult, but not hard, normally done by having a a different phone number associated with Google Ads.

Would setting up a dedicated landing page that can only be found via AdWords be a good idea?

Absolutely. In fact you should ( in my opinion ) always have dedicated landing pages for Google Ads ( and they should be no indexed from organic ) .

A key element that drives Google Ads is quality score, and you won't be able to optimise that by sharing SEO landing pages with Ads. Also with Ads you should be more aggressively A/B testing for conversion rates.

If you don't you are probably blowing £300 of your £400-600 a month budget.

There are several good Landing Page tools that make this easy and code free.