Let s Talk about GOOOOOOAAALS!

Transcription

1

2 Let s Talk about GOOOOOOAAALS! Welcome to the Goals & Conversions worksheet. This is the 2nd supplementary training resource for Paid Search Magic s Audit Month. Goals and Conversions and the tracking thereof is not for the faint of heart. This will probably require some serious thought and collaboration if changes are needed. As always, if you have questions along the way, feel free to reach out: amy@paidsearchmagic.com 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 2

3 AdWords Goals & Conversions Audit Account Name: Account ID: Date of Audit: Performed by: We ll be using the New AdWords Interface. In this guide, we ll be mostly working with the information found here: Items Reviewed: Know your Resources 4 Account Goals and Objectives 5 Tracking 9 Conversions - Detangling the Rat King Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 3

4 Know your Resources Before you get started, answer these questions: Who determines the goals for Paid Search: Who manages tracking and code placement your team and / or client-side What tools or platforms are being used to track interactions and goals: include account names, logins and links 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 4

5 Account Goals and Objectives What s the return on the AdWords investment? The reason this business exists is to: What are the main goals for the AdWords account? Does PPC success align with business success and encourage business growth? If not, what would need to change? Has this been brought to the client s attention? Which is more important to account stakeholders: Growth more leads, more sales, more volume, more awareness Efficiency lower CPAs, better ROIs, increased profit, more sales within a fixed budget How is budget determined? Fixed set monthly budget Flexible performance driven Is there anything related to spend or objectives that should be revisited? 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 5

6 Goal & Success Measurement Let s look at the measuring the results you re driving. What s the most important action someone can take after they click your PPC ad whether it happens immediately, or down the road / offline? As a marketer, how do you know when / whether people take that action? It happens on the website It happens later and is tracked with CRM or other tools that tie back to our PPC data It happens later and is attributed back to PPC efforts through guesses, formulas, self-reported data, and anecdotes It happens later and we never hear what finally happens, or else there s a vague report of numbers are up / down Are you comfortable with the information you have about the results you re driving from your account? Do you have the information you need to make meaningful improvements? If there are concerns, have you worked with your client / manager to resolve them? Can anything be revisited? Understanding the true impact of your work can, in turn, lead to better decisions and even better results! 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 6

7 Big Goals & Little Goals Let s look at macro conversions and micro conversions. What is the most important activity that someone can do on the site? Become a lead Make a purchase Other Are you currently tracking this as your KPI Key Performance Indicator? If not, are you comfortable with the reasons for that, or should something change? Thinking again about the most important action someone can take after clicking your ad: What steps or touch points are likely to contribute to that action? Talking to support / sales call, chat, text, Consultation or demo Viewing or downloading key content videos, website pages, coupons, webinars, spec sheets / whitepapers Submitting contact information Entering a contest / challenge Social media engagement Subscribing to future s or content A small purchase / subscription Starting a trial or application Attending an event Request a quote Store visits Other activities 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 7

8 Which of these activities on the previous page are you measuring / reporting on? Are they given proper weight with respect to their impact on your biggest goals? Is there anything you should add or subtract? Performance Metrics To round out the section on goals, let s look at your metrics. What metrics do you report on: Do you have targets for metrics improve CTR, lower CPC, increase conversion rate, maintain $20 CPL or ROI of 7, etc Are any of your targets at tension with your primary goals target CPC is too low to be competitive on high-converting keywords, etc? Do you have separate goals for different campaign types and strategies awareness / visibility campaigns vs direct response campaigns? If yes, are goals appropriate? If not, is this something to introduce this year? Are there any other issues with goals that should be reviewed / addressed? 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 8

9 Tracking Let s make sure that your conversions are tracking correctly! Have you ever wondered where your Conversion Actions come from? In the new AdWords Interface, they are set here Measurement > Conversions > New Conversion : Note that Google Analytics is now lumped in with other Import conversions - it no longer gets its own special section. If you re unfamiliar with how conversions are set up, take some time to review this part of the interface. This section is primarily for reviewing AdWords conversions. If you re using 3rd party tracking or relying on external numbers, you ll want to verify that those numbers are accurate as well. Clicking into the name of the conversion will give you more details about how it s setup and whether a conversion value has been assigned. If it s from Google Analytics, you can find more details there. Let s do some old fashioned auditing by checking for things that may have been set up incorrectly in AdWords conversions Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 9

10 Example Tracking Issues In this section, we ll look at some examples of what can go wrong, and how to spot it. First up, Status and Conversion windows : Status If your Status is Unverified or Tag inactive, that s obviously a problem. It means you re not accruing any conversions in the system, whether or not people are taking action. This is easy to flag in Conversion Actions since it s in red! Conversion Window There s no universal right or wrong conversion window, but it s good to be consistent. In this example, 3 conversion types have 3 different conversion windows. You ll want to decide on an appropriate conversion window based on Attribution time paths and ensure that there s a strategy behind each selected conversion window Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 10

11 Next example: Repeat rate and Duplicate conversions Repeat Rate Repeat rate #1 in the illustration above is calculated as every conversion / one conversion. For some businesses and conversion types, a high repeat rate might be normal. But in general, the further the number gets above 1, the more likely it is there s a double-tracking problem. A repeat rate of 4.39 is definitely not normal, and probably not accurate. Duplicate Goal Imports In example #2 above, there are 2 distinct goals that seem to be tracking the same action. This can happen when the same goal is tracked in both AdWords and Google Analytics, or, in the case above, when multiple goals exist in Google Analytics that track the same goals, and both are imported into AdWords. Avoid inflated conversion counts by only tracking one conversion action per goal Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 11

12 These 4 areas will actually tell you a lot: if your tracking isn t firing or if it s likely double counting, if you ve got duplicate conversion data, and whether you re being consistent in your lookback window. It doesn t alert you to whether there are key conversions that should be importing but aren t. That will be on you to review with your team. And as mentioned earlier, if you re using 3rd party data for tracking, you won t see that here. And when you check AdWords conversion goals against other tracking sources, they will almost always be off. You ll need to accept some amount of variance between the two systems Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 12

13 Conversions - Detangling the Rat King In this section, we ll review how conversions are measured and reported on in the AdWords Interface. First question to review: Should Conversions be Counted as Conversions? Does the question itself feel like a ridiculous loop? I get it. Take a deep breath, and stay with me. There are some things you may want to measure and track, but NOT to count as conversions rejected or unqualified lead submits come to mind. To keep them from showing up in your conversions count, edit Include in Conversions to no Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 13

14 Next, you ll want to subdivide the Conversions column in your Interface so that you can better understand just what those conversions are that you re driving. There are a few ways to do this. This is going to look complicated, because there are a lot of instructions. The instructions are detailed, but it s pretty straight forward. If you re not using AdWords conversions, you can skip it entirely! Option 1: Add a segment for Conversion actions The first way to subdivide to create a segment where you can see what conversion types are being driven for each Campaign: Once you ve done that, you ll see all your conversion actions as separate line items Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 14

15 Here s an example of a campaign with the conversion action segment applied. Note the entire campaign had $ in spend : Now you can see just what those Conversions are! If you ve never done this before, pay attention to this: The Cost / conversion column just takes the total spend for the area you re subdividing, and divides it by the actions for the specific conversion type. In the example above, 2 different conversion types have 1 completion, and Cost/ conversions of $2500+! It doesn t add up. That s because spend isn t accrued against specific conversion actions. Use the Cost / conv metrics with caution when applying segments! Segmenting by conversion type can be a quick and dirty way to dig into the data, but since you have to review each conversion type against 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 15

16 each campaign to get meaningful campaign data, it s not the best way to review the account at a glance. Option 2: Create a Scoreboard Rather than subdividing each Campaign, you can add custom columns to your AdWords dashboard where you can see multiple conversion types all at once. You can add each Conversion type as its own custom column: This will give you more meaningful conversion columns: Be sure to save the columns so you can quickly and easily return to it! 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 16

17 You did it! Congratulations - you audited your goals and conversions! Even if you still have unanswered questions, reviewing this section now will get you the info you need for better optimizations in the future. You may have noticed some areas that need to be addressed. Jot them down below: High Priority Action Items Items to Review Later That s it for this guide. Great work, and happy auditing! 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 17