Digital marketing covers a range of platforms to utilize. Recently, social media, SEO, Google Ads, remarketing, and email campaigns are staples in a digital marketing strategy. Each channel has its own unique set of metrics to monitor to track performance. Modern multi-platform marketing is the prime driver in most online commerce. Thus, understanding what metrics are important and how they affect your business is vital.
Understanding key metrics is especially important for your Google Ads campaigns as it’s a highly competitive and data-driven platform.
Regardless of the platform, our digital marketing tips will help any marketer build accurate reports to make informed decisions on your marketing efforts and compete in the digital economy in 2022.
10 Marketing Metrics to Track Google Ads Performance
Leads/Conversions
First, we need to understand the success of marketing efforts by establishing your conversion metric. Typically known as an action goal, this can be a phone call, form fill, newsletter sign up, video view, sale or more. After defining your goal, then you can accurately track meaningful results and ultimately determine if it is cost-effective.
For example, if your product usually requires a demonstration or phone conversation to complete, then you want people to contact you. The campaign should incite users to enter the marketing funnel by submitting their contact information, scheduling a demo, or making a call.
Other campaigns, particularly e-commerce, should focus on the online sale metric as the conversion. An awareness or branding campaign may focus on video views and page visits.
For most purposes, it is useful to identify multiple conversion goals to track user activity at different stages of the marketing funnel. For example, a goal for page views from a particular source, a goal for interaction, such as a call or form-fill, and finally a goal tracking actual sales. This gives a complete view of the marketing funnel and shows where it may need improvement.
Finally, goals for remarketing can show how effective your campaigns are at re-engaging previous customers. They’re defined as users who have fallen out at different stages of the funnel such as abandoned carts or leads that did not convert to sales. You can learn more about tracking conversions and closing the conversion funnel on our blog.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Cost Per Lead refers to how much it costs to produce a lead, such as a call, form fill or other activity that gets a client in your marketing funnel. Most campaigns for the service industry or large purchases focus on this.
This can also include signing up for a newsletter or registering for a beta that could lead to a sale in the future.
Cost per lead is important as a measure for all platforms, but it is often associated as a primary metric with paid search.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Similar to CPL, Cost Per Acquisition specifically refers to action such as a sale or subscription that acquires the user as a customer. For e-commerce, this is relatively simple as you can link your analytics to your shopping cart. For offline conversions, such as services, this may require connecting CRM data to your web analytics.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
This is often ignored but should be one of the first questions you ask yourself before setting a cost-effective CPA goal. Consider how often clients return, and how much they spend. For the service industry, are they likely to add a service plan down the line? For consumer products, are they likely to return and buy more? What is the gross profit from returning customers? Get into the customer mindset and understand their CLV when purchasing your products or services.
Content Engagement
Depending on your goal, this can enhance your reports. Knowing how users engage with your content is crucial. Particularly, if you have a product that requires multiple touchpoints to convert, it’s important to examine areas with high drop rates. Content engagement metrics can include views, likes, comments, and shares.
Low content engagement may be an indicator that your content needs improvement or is showing to the wrong audience. A drop-off in engagement over time indicates a need to refresh content. Seeing the same article on social media repeatedly may cause users to tune it out. Adding topical or trending subjects to content can increase engagement and extend longevity of your campaign.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-Through Rate refers to how often an ad is clicked, versus how often it is shown. This primarily shows if the ad needs improvement or its target audience needs to be updated. Ads are highly competitive and making sure that the message is simple, understandable, and offers a unique benefit is vital.
CTR is a primary indicator of ad quality and engagement. The best practice is to run multiple ads with different creative and evaluate what ad messaging is performing the best. Learn how to improve CTR.
Conversion Rate (CVR)
Conversion Rate is the ratio of how often someone converts to the desired goal versus how often a landing page is visited after clicking an ad. This is a primary indicator of how effective your landing page is at converting visits and if it needs improvement.
Common conversion rate issues are a disconnect between the ad creative and what users see when getting to the landing page. Anything that impedes the conversion should be minimized, such as getting the call-to-action (form, phone number, etc.) above the fold, reducing page load time, and minimizing any clicks or fields that are required to complete it.
Bounce Rate
Essentially, bounce rate is the percentage of users who are getting to your landing page and leaving without performing any other action. A high bounce rate could be an indicator that your page or call-to-action needs improvement. This goes hand-in-hand with time-on-page.
Time-on-Page/Visit Duration
Time-on-page is an indicator of how relevant your page is to the creative that generated the visit. Also, it can identify other issues that may be affecting the user experience. As with conversion rate, this could indicate page speed or other elements are in need of improvement.
Impression Share
Impression share refers to how often your ad creative is viewed, versus how often it could be viewed. This can show if there is more potential audience for an ad, or if you need to adjust your search terms, budget, and audience to increase impressions.
Ready to Improve Your Marketing Strategies in 2022?
Each campaign is unique, but having a basic understanding of key metrics can enhance your performance. Google Ads and paid search efforts have sky-rocketed with the boom of online spending post-pandemic. Work with our team to maximize ROI on your digital marketing strategies in 2022. Contact us for a personalized marketing strategy and jumpstart the new year with high-converting campaigns.