Make Google Ads Work Harder for You with Analytics
What is Google Ads?
How can you link your Google Ads account to your Analytics account?
What can linking your accounts help you learn about your marketing?
Picture Diana’s Canoe Couture, a business that caters to nature lovers who want to add a little style to their outdoor gear and paddle-wear.
It’s a niche business, but Diana knows that if she reaches the right audience, she can hopefully generate the sales needed to upgrade her own wardrobe.
Diana’s already set up an account with Google Analytics, so she can have a better understanding of what visitors do when they reach her website. But she’s still not reaching enough people who want to make lakes and forests fabulous.
She’s read that Google Ads can help her use online ads to reach a customer base that would be legitimately interested in hitting the wild in style.
But what kind of ads can she buy and measure with Google Ads?
Google Ads has ways to help you create online ad campaigns and target potential customers.
With Google Ads, you can associate your campaigns with “keywords” – phrases matched to terms that customers might search for or web content they might view. So canoe clothier Diana might choose “river rafting” or “camping trip.”
The system also allows you to broadcast various types of online ads – including display, search, and video ads – on numerous websites that Google either manages or has a relationship with.
Display ads (AKA banner ads) generally use text, images, or animation to convey a message. They show up on sites across the web, from popular news outlets to small blogs that focus on niche interests (like fly fishing in Antarctica).
Search ads, meanwhile, are ads that appear in Google search results when people look for things related to your business. And video ads are great if you have film content like a commercial you’d like to run before YouTube videos.
TIP
Google Ads lets you see if people click your ads, go to your website, and make a purchase.
But many visitors might just browse your site. Linking your Google Ads and Analytics accounts can help you learn about their experiences, too.
Linking Google Ads and Analytics can give you insights into what people who click an ad do on your website. It’s like having a 6th sense just for online activity.
To link the accounts, log in to your Google Ads account and edit your “Linked Accounts” settings. Then, to access all the sweet, sweet info that’s now at your disposal, view the reports under Analytics’ “Acquisitions” tab.
Three of the most important reports are titled Campaigns, Keywords, and Bid Adjustments. Analyzing data from each of these can help you make smarter decisions about your marketing.
With Campaigns, you can get insights into how well your Google Ads campaigns are doing.
One stat you can dig into is “CPC,” which stands for “cost per click.” This ratio pits the amount you’ve spent on your ads against the number of clicks the ads are getting. It’s a good way to see the e-bang of your e-buck.
There’s also “Behavior,” which provides details on how visitors who click an ad act once they reach your website – for example, you can see if they browse a few pages or skedaddle as soon as they reach your landing page.
Other data points within Campaigns are “Goals” and “Conversions.” The former shows you if a visitor completes a specific task on your site, while the latter provides data on how many people click an ad and then actually buy something.
Since keywords play an important role in online ads managed through Google Ads, the data found under Keywords can also be very valuable to you.
Let’s return to Diana and her canoe couture. She sees that ads associated with the keyword phrase “relaxing vacations” drive traffic to her website, but these visitors don’t stay long.
On her site, she could emphasize that the gear she sells is really comfortable and great for a holiday, so that visitors she targets against the keyword “relaxing vacations” feel as though they’re finding their ideal nature-wear.
Diana also sees that the ads associated with “relaxing vacations” aren’t shown too often. She could consider adjusting her ad buy (AKA her “bid”) to try and have the ads appear more and reach more people.
Another data set is Bid Adjustments. This info can help you consider how effective your ad buy is based off of customer data.
When you use Google Ads, you can bid to have your ad appear based on info about your customers that you think could be meaningful: their locations, the devices they use, or the times of day they’re online. You can see this data in Bid Adjustments.
For example, in her Bid Adjustments report, Diana sees that her mobile ads outperform her desktop marketing. She also sees that visitors to her site click on ads for products like high-end, hand-stitched life vests just after dinner.
With this in mind, she can adjust her bid to try and have her mobile banners appear more often. She can also increase the bid for 8-11pm, when the moon seems to push people to unleash their most elegant nature lover.
As her online ads run, Diana can keep using the insights she gains to measure and tweak her marketing. That way, she can reach more quality potential customers and get her goods out of the warehouse and onto the water.
DO THIS NOW
Linking Google Ads with Analytics can help many businesses make smarter decisions about their online advertising. Ready to see if it’s the right move for you?
If you’re participating in the course, go to the next section to access your self assessment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Analytics accounts can give you insights into how people who click one of your ads acts when they reach your website.
There are multiple reports that can help you see the data generated from living these accounts, including your Campaign, Keywords, Bid Adjustments reports.
Studying these reports can help you figure out how to adjust your marketing, so that people who click on your ads take positive action on your website.