Conversion Tracking for Google Ads: Best Practices

A Google Ads campaign's success extends much beyond the number of ad views or clicks. When you want to generate leads, sales, and other conversions, you need to know what happens when a user clicks on your ad.

So, before you start running Google Ads, be sure that you have set up conversion tracking. Here are some tips to help you from the start: 

The Road To Success In Your Google Add Conversion Tracking 

The options you select when generating a new conversion significantly influence whether or not it is a success. If you want the most significant results, make sure you follow these guidelines.

• Conversion Name: Give as much information as possible about your activities in the name of your conversion. To properly track an event, you'll need to provide both the event's source and the URL it occurred.
  
• Primary vs. Secondary Actions: To optimize for action, choose prominent as your campaign's primary objective. If you only want to observe, select secondary. Drives aren't designed to maximize results from unintended consequences.
  
• Conversion Value: There will be dynamic values that will be entered here from online purchases. However, you may use the same value for each conversion for lead forms, phone calls, and other activities that do not have a dynamic value. In some instances, this may be as simple as adding 1, 2, and 3 to your different conversions according to their significance, or you may assess their worth by using the percentage possibility of expanding into a close lead.
  
• Count: 'Every.' should be used for dynamic value conversions. All other modifications should be performed with 'One.' If a visitor to your site submitted a form three times, you would only want the first submission to qualify as a conversion (one). Likewise, it makes sense to want each transaction to be counted as a conversion if a customer visits your site three times and buys three different things.
  
• Click-Through conversion: As soon as a user clicks on one of your ads, you can calculate the time it will take for that user to convert. Choose a timeframe of 60 - 90 days if you're looking to generate leads. Choose 60 if the service's consideration term is less than a week. If it's more than 90 minutes, go for it. Set the return period to 30 days if you're selling products online. For more costly items, make your shopping list longer; make your list shorter for lesser things.
  
  
• Attribution model: Utilize one of the following methods: data-driven, time-delayed, or position-based. As part of their incentive program, they'll grant credit for a prospect's first visit to the site and their subsequent visits. This setup is ideal for optimizing performance. However, the lack of data points provided by Last Click will limit your bid strategies and optimizations; therefore, don't utilize it for your campaigns!
  
  

Advanced tip: Where to pay attention

Now that we've covered the fundamentals of conversion tracking let's look at some of the most common issues in Google Ads accounts. 

• Having no idea what to look for

Take a step back and stroll through your customer's journey to better understand what activities you should measure as actual conversions. A single click from an ad may not result in a sale if your product or service has a longer sales cycle or is more complicated. You may have to go outside the box and develop activities for your potential customers to participate in.

• Low conversion rates

There are several ways to tell if tracking isn't working correctly, but one of the most common is if conversion data appears to be somewhat low (and not just zeros across the board). Any changes you've made that may have impacted performance can be found by looking through your modification history. After that, ask yourself this type of question: Budgets or bids were cut to save money? Possibly, my keywords aren't as well-known? Is this the time of year that has traditionally been less active?

• Conversion Data seems to be off

You've always had a lot of sales, but your conversion rates have been prolonged. So, in addition to checking the GTM plugin for multiple tags or tags on the incorrect page and remembering to rule out a performance first, you'll want to double-check two particular elements of the "Conversions" section once again.

• Tag ”inactive” in the Conversions section

One of two words appears in the Google Ads Conversions section: "tag inactive" or "no recent conversions." Then again, it may be because you recently converted. This action is small, as nothing is to do about it. These texts appear to be a red sign, but clicking over them reveals that they're pretty harmless.

So, what exactly can you keep a closer eye on with conversion tracking?

You may use this information to analyze and assess the effectiveness of your efforts by keeping track of conversions. Google Ads conversion monitoring is a great resource. Check to see that you have everything set up correctly, and if you do, maybe these pointers will come in handy.

If you’d like to learn more about setting up a Google Ads campaign correctly, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!