Picking Google Ads KPIs and Metrics That Truly Matter to Your Business
Advertising is a great way to raise awareness about your business and reach new customers.
With the rise of the internet, digital advertising has become a vital piece of the pie for your advertising strategy. As you might expect, there are many different digital advertising options. You can use Facebook Advertising, Google Ads, YouTube ads, TikTok ads, and the list goes on. It can be hard to keep track of the different things you should be monitoring on each of these.
The most popular digital advertising tool is invariably Google Ads. Tracking the right KPIs for Google ads will help you and your company measure how well your campaign is going and what you can do to make it perform better. For scaling businesses, monitoring the specific Google Ads KPI startups rely on is critical. In this article, we'll walk you through the performance metrics you need to measure and cover what they mean.
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First and foremost, tracking all of these is crucial so you get a complete picture of how your ads are performing. Let's start with one of the most important: Conversions.
1. Conversions
Conversions are one of the most important metrics to measure because this is one of the only metrics that tell you definitively that your advertisement was effective.
A conversion happens when the user completes your desired action — when a user buys your product. While there's a lot to be said for getting new users on your site or raising awareness about a product or service, those things don't always necessarily lead to sales. Conversions are the best way to determine if your ad spend is worthwhile.
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2. Click Through Rate (CTR)
When reviewing your Google Ads KPI, Click Through Rate is a great way to tell if your advertising is effective. This measures the number of times someone clicks on your ad after seeing it. If you have an incredibly low CTR, you may want to pull your ad to work on its copy or presentation since it does not have the effect you want it to have. If your CTR is high, your ad is effectively doing its job of getting users to click. If your ad is performing effectively, you may want to increase your ad spend to get it in front of more people.
3. Impressions
Speaking of getting your ad in front of more people, it is vital to get your ads seen. Whether you are running search campaigns or analyzing google display ads KPIs, impressions will help you to measure how many people have seen your ad. These don't necessarily mean conversions, but by tracking impressions, you can tell how many people have seen your ad. If you want to increase the number of impressions you get, you can try increasing your campaign budget, which will show the ad to more people or you can change the ad's content to make it more relevant to additional users.
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4. Clicks and Cost Per Click
Google Ads are pay-per-click advertisements, so you must measure both clicks and cost per click to ensure your ad performs as expected. Clicks are the volume of clicks your ad is getting in a given time and cost per click is just what it sounds like: the amount of money you are paying per click. While Google does have limits you can set to make sure you never go over your budget, this is a good one to keep an eye on.
5. Cost Per Acquisition
This cost is higher than your cost per click because it is the cost per acquisition. This is how much it costs when a user clicks on your ad and takes the desired action. This number must be lower than the revenue they are bringing in the long term. It isn't worth it if it costs you more to attract a customer than the revenue you'll get from bringing them on board.
More resources: High Intent Traffic Without Ad Bloat
6. Return on Investment
While there are many Google ads KPIs you can track, the most important thing is that your advertisement is making you money. Tracking the ultimate Google AdWords KPI—your return on investment—ensures your campaign is actually worth the money you're spending on it. If your ads are costing you more than they're making you, then it probably isn't worth continuing.
While those certainly don't cover all the metrics you can monitor with Google Ads, those are crucial in determining your success or failure with advertising on Google. Google Ads requires expertise, experimentation, and innovation on behalf of the user. Therefore, you have to look at your campaigns and constantly readjust based on the Google ads KPI metrics we've outlined above. You should have a successful campaign if you're willing to adjust based on these core metrics.
