Google Ads conversion tracking
Accelerate your campaign success with Google Ads conversion tracking: optimise conversions, measure effectiveness and improve your return on online advertising investment. So get started today and take your advertising to the next level!
What is Google Ads conversion tracking?
Google Ads conversion tracking helps you measure and track visitors' actions after they've clicked on your ads. These actions, also called "conversions", may include buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter or filling in a form on a website.
By tracking these conversions, you can understand which ads lead to valuable customer actions. The return on investment (ROI) of your campaigns can be increased by using this information to target your advertising budget.
How does Google Ads conversion tracking work?
Google Ads conversion tracking works by placing a unique code on the conversion page of a website. When a user performs a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a form, the code sends a signal to Google Ads.
This signal is monitored as a result, providing valuable information on the effectiveness of the campaign. The conversion data includes the ad that led to the action, allowing advertisers to measure and optimise campaigns.
It also helps to attribute conversions to specific keywords and ad placements, which helps to understand the impact of different marketing activities. In addition, conversion tracking enables features such as automatic price quotes and conversion-based optimisation to improve campaign effectiveness and ROI.
How can Google Ads conversion tracking benefit your business?
Google Ads conversion tracking offers many benefits to your business by providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns. Here are several ways in which Google Ads conversion tracking can benefit your business:
Improved ROI analysis
Google Ads conversion tracking gives you an idea of the return on investment (ROI). It shows you which ads are driving valuable action, helping you make informed budget decisions. This insight can lead to better profitability and more efficient use of marketing resources.
Understanding customer behaviour
Understanding the customer journey is crucial to successful marketing. Conversion tracking allows you to see what customers do after they interact with your ads. This can guide your marketing strategy and help you understand what resonates with your target audience.
Optimisation of campaigns
Effective advertising campaigns require continuous optimisation. Conversion tracking provides the data to identify effective keywords, ads and campaigns. It allows you to allocate more resources to what works and reduce spending on less effective strategies.
Rising conversion rates
A higher conversion rate means more value for your advertising budget. You can identify the factors that lead to successful results by using conversion tracking. This allows you to adjust your strategies to improve conversion rates.
Effective remarketing
Google Ads conversion tracking is essential for remarketing campaigns. It allows you to target advertising to users who have interacted with your ads but have not yet produced results. Reaching these users again increases the likelihood of conversions.
Views on customer value
Not all conversions are equal. Some customers may make one small purchase, while others may become regular customers. Conversion tracking can help you understand the lifetime value of different customer segments.
Improving the content and layout of your ad
Conversion tracking data allows you to refine the content and layout of your ad. You can find out which messages, images or calls to action increase conversions. This can guide your creative process and lead to more effective ads.
Linking to business objectives
Google Ads conversion tracking can be tailored to your specific business goals. You can track what matters to your business, whether it's purchases, registrations or form submissions. This ensures that your advertising strategy is aligned with your wider business objectives.
Improving the performance of mobile apps
If you have a mobile app, conversion monitoring can track installations and in-app functions. This can provide valuable insights into how your ads are driving interactions within apps. This information can help you optimise your app marketing strategy.
Types of conversions you can track with Google Ads
By tracking different types of results, you can measure user actions that interact with advertising. Below we explore some of the key conversion types you can track with Google Ads.
Website functions
Website activities are the most common type of monitoring. These cover all activities that take place on a website after a user clicks on your ad. This may include submitting a form, making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. By tracking these behaviours, you can learn a lot about how your ads influence users' behaviour on your website.
Phone calls
Google Ads allows you to track phone conversions for businesses where phone contact is important. This could be from call clicks received through mobile ads, calls made directly from a website, or even from dialling a phone number displayed on a website. By tracking these conversions, you can measure the effectiveness of ads in generating valuable phone leads.
Application installations and in-application conversions
If you're in the mobile app industry, tracking app installs and in-app conversions is crucial. Google Ads can track your app downloads from an ad and track in-app activities such as in-app purchases or reaching a certain level in a game. This information helps to refine your app's advertising strategy.
Imported or offline conversions
Offline conversions or imported conversions are those that start online but finish offline. Examples might include in-store purchases or contracts signed in person. You can import this data into Google Ads to see which ads are driving these valuable offline conversions and get a complete picture of your campaign's effectiveness.
Local conversions
Local conversions are related to user activities at the physical location of the company. This may include visits to your store after an advertisement for local products or interactions with Google My Business data. Tracking local conversions helps local businesses understand how ads affect in-person visits.
Microconversions
Micro-conversions are smaller actions, such as downloads of materials or visits to pricing pages. They provide valuable information about user engagement with your ads. By tracking micro-conversions, you can optimise your campaigns, improve the user experience and lay the groundwork for higher conversions. Small actions can lead to bigger results, so don't underestimate the importance of micro-conversions.
How do I set up conversion tracking in Google Ads?
Setting up Google Ads conversion tracking is essential to accurately measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and optimise your marketing strategies. Here are step-by-step instructions for setting up Google Ads conversion tracking:
Creating a conversion function
First, log in to your Google Ads account, click on Tools and Settings, then Conversions. Click the plus button to create a new conversion feature. You'll need to select the type of conversion you want to track, such as website visits, calls or app downloads.
Configuring conversion settings
Once you have selected the conversion type, fill in the settings. This includes setting the conversion name, value, amount and click ratio of the conversion window. Each setting helps to customize conversion tracking and reporting.
Specifying the conversion tag
Next, you create a conversion tracking tag. For website tracking purposes, it's a JavaScript code snippet that you place on the page where the conversion occurs, such as a thank you or order confirmation page.
Enabling the tag on a website
You or your web developer must add the generated tag to the HTML code of your website. It is important that the tag code is placed on the correct page and not modified. Incorrect placement or editing can cause problems with conversion tracking.
Checking conversion tracking settings
Once you have enabled the tag, make sure it works correctly. Use the Google Tag Assistant or check the conversion statistics in your Google Ads account after a while. It may take a few hours for the data to start appearing.
Optimisation of campaigns
Now that you have set up conversion tracking, use the data to optimise your advertising campaigns. Analyse your conversion data, understand which ads are driving valuable action, and make the necessary changes to improve your ROI.
What can you do with Google Ads conversion tracking data?
Proper analysis and use of conversion tracking data can create more effective campaigns, increase user engagement and improve return on investment. Below we look at some of the key areas where conversion tracking data can be useful.
✔ Measure the effectiveness of your campaign: You can use conversion data to measure the success of your campaign. This will help you determine which ads, keywords or campaigns are bringing the most valuable action. This allows you to allocate your budget more efficiently.
✔ Optimise your ads: Conversion data allows you to refine your ads based on effectiveness. Ads with higher conversions can be improved, while less successful ads can be edited or rejected. This ensures better use of your advertising budget.
✔ Improve your price offer strategy: Conversion data allows you to use Google's automated price bidding strategies more effectively. These strategies, such as Maximize Conversions and CPA Target, use historical data to optimize bidding. This can lead to more conversions at a lower price.
✔ Understand your customers: Conversion tracking helps you understand your customers better. You can see who is interested in your ads and who is taking valuable action. With this understanding, you can tailor your marketing efforts to the behaviour of your target audience.
✔ Scaling business growth: Effective use of conversion tracking data can drive business growth. Insights from this data support informed decisions, improving the effectiveness of advertising. This ultimately fuels growth by bringing more profitable actions from potential customers.
✔ Improve keywords: You can use conversion data to identify which keywords are producing the most results. With this information, you can optimise your keyword strategy, bid higher for effective keywords and lower for those that don't work.
✔ A guide to content creation: Understanding how to manage conversions can guide the content creation process. If certain product pages or blog posts lead to better results, similar content can be produced to attract your audience and increase conversions.
✔ Report re-marketing strategies: The data provided by conversion monitoring is vital for remarketing. Conversion tracking allows you to identify users who have interacted with your brand and retarget them with specific ads. This increases the likelihood of conversions.
✔ Evaluate the effectiveness of the landing page: Conversion data can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of different landing pages. Pages that produce more results can be further optimised, while poorer performing pages can be redesigned to better meet user needs. This helps to improve the overall user experience and increase results.
Does Google Ads conversion tracking affect your SEO strategy?
Google Ads conversion tracking and search engine optimisation are separate but related strategies. Although conversion tracking does not directly affect search engine optimisation, it provides valuable insights that can be useful for a search engine optimisation strategy.
Conversion data can help you understand what makes users take the desired action after clicking on your ads. This can be influenced by things like the impact of certain keywords or landing pages. These insights can then be used to optimise the content, layout and keywords on your site for organic search, improving the effectiveness of your search engine optimisation.
In addition, a well-rounded search engine optimisation strategy complements paid advertising by increasing the visibility and credibility of your website, potentially improving the effectiveness of your advertising. A balance of paid advertising and search engine optimisation can contribute to overall online success.
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Is it possible to track offline conversions in Google Ads?
Yes, it is perfectly possible to track offline conversions in Google Ads. This feature is very important for businesses with valuable offline customer activities such as phone calls or in-store purchases.
You can import offline conversions to your Google Ads account using Google's offline conversion tracking. You can do this easily by linking an ad click to a specific offline activity, such as a sale in a physical store.
The process involves storing a unique identifier, known as GCLID (Google Click Identifier), when a user clicks on your ad. Later, this GCLID matches the offline conversion data you upload to Google Ads, giving you a complete picture of the success of your campaign.
Frequently asked questions
Starting to use Google Ads conversion tracking can often raise many questions. Here we'll cover some frequently asked questions to help you better understand Google Ads conversion tracking.
You can view conversion data in your Google Ads account. The Conversions column in the Campaign, Ad Group, Ads and Keywords reports contains this information. You can customize these reports to look at specific conversion activities.
Yes. Google Ads' cross-device conversion tracking allows you to monitor when a consumer responds to an ad on one device and converts on another. This gives you a more accurate understanding of how your ads are influencing consumer behaviour.
Conversion delay is the time it takes for a person to click on your ad and then convert. Because of this delay, you may notice changes in your conversion data for a few days after your ads are displayed. You need to take this delay into account when analysing your conversion data.
Google Ads and Google Analytics provide a comprehensive picture of user behaviour. Google Ads tracks conversions, while Google Analytics provides additional information about users, such as immediate exit rate, time spent on the site and pages per visit.
Yes, Google Ads conversion tracking can track "micro conversions". These are smaller actions a user might take before a more important conversion, such as adding a product to a shopping cart before making a purchase.
Conversion data allows you to run A/B tests more efficiently. You can test different versions of ads or landing pages, and measure which leads to higher conversion rates. This provides valuable information for future campaigns.
Unconfirmed status means that Google Ads has not yet seen any recent conversions from your tracking tag. This may be due to incorrect tag deployment or because it takes up to 7 days to update the status after adding a tag.
Yes, Google Ads can track conversions in different browsers. Conversions are recorded even if a person clicks on an ad in one browser and converts in another.
To maintain reliable conversion monitoring and measurement, it is recommended to continuously analyse and improve conversion monitoring settings. Keep an eye on the data, make any necessary changes and stay up to date with new features and updates to the Google Ads platform.
Yes, Google Ads conversion tracking complies with data protection rules. It provides features such as anonymisation and support for user consent requirements to ensure the protection of user data.
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