AdWords - Why You Should Track Conversions
AdWords is a great pay-per-click platform that can be very cost-effective too. Chances are if you've been using AdWords for some time, you're probably getting lots of clicks from your large list of keywords. But how many of these keywords result in a sale or conversion?
Do you really need to know which keywords convert well since the campaign is working and you're making money?
Your campaign may be working well and you may indeed be making money. But you may be able to reduce the amount you spend on PPC marketing and still make the same amount of profits.
A conversion is normally defined as the moment when a visitor on your website makes a purchase and exchanges money with you. However, a conversion doesn't have to be monetary. It can also be the moment the visitor takes an action that you want them to e.g. signing up to a newsletter, reading a certain page, completing a survey, contacting you for more information etc.
Why track Conversions?
Let's imagine you own a shop in a high-street as an example. It has plenty of customers and you're making good profits from the products you're selling. You're happy with the number of customers your shop gets. But if you knew why these customers were coming to your shop and where they were coming from you could find more like-minded customers to also come into your shop.
You could then alter your marketing to target these types of customers, where they came from, and their needs. This would greatly improve the return on your marketing budget. You would get more customers for the amount you spend on getting them.
The same example is also true for your website. Your website is your shop window. You should get lots of people looking round and buying products from your website. But what would really help your marketing is if you know what sort of people buy from you. How old are they? What gender are they? Where did they come from? How did they find you?
How do I track Conversions?
The best way to track conversions with AdWords is to login to your account and under "Reporting" select "Conversions". It's very quick and easy to setup conversion tracking. You'll be given some code to insert into the web page where the conversion completes.
You can then go to your campaign page where conversions will start being tracked. You can now go through all your keywords and list them on order of conversions. Just remove the keywords that don't convert well or are costing too much money.
If you need help setting up conversion tracking in Google AdWords check out my post Google AdWords How To Track Conversions
All the best
Simon
