How Can I Track My Google AdWords?
It’s no secret that setting up a Google AdWords campaign can be a fantastic strategy for positioning your medical or dental practice in front of patients actively searching for treatments and/or services you provide. The question that begs to be asked, however, is how do you know if your AdWords campaign is working? More specifically, how do you know if people are seeing your ads, if they are clicking on your ads, and if the ones who do visit your site are eventually converting into patients?
Luckily for you, Rosemont Media is here to provide some insight into how you can better track your Google Adwords to determine if your efforts are paying off – both literally and figuratively.
Understanding Basic Metrics
To keep things simple, there are three basic metrics to pay attention to when evaluating the efficacy of your AdWords campaign, each of which can be found under the “Campaigns” tab in your practice’s AdWords account. This trio of metrics includes:
- Impressions – Impressions signify how many times your ad was displayed in Google search results, which essentially equates to the number of times it was seen by potential patients.
- Clicks – Clicks represent how many times your ad was actually clicked on, or in other words, the number of potential patients who were driven to your website via the ad.
- Click-through rate (CTR) – Click-through rate is the quantity of clicks divided by the quantity of impressions for a given ad, measuring the success of said ad.
Generally speaking, the higher your CTR, the better. A high CTR (typically anything greater than 1%) means your ad not only shows up in Google results frequently, it also appears in front of the correct audience. So, for example, if your CTR for an ad is 1.3%, your ad is doing relatively well at generating traffic to your website. In contrast, if your CTR for an ad is far less than 1%—let’s say 0.65%—this indicates that your ad is appearing in front of people who aren’t clicking on it. When this is the case, you may need to adjust the ad’s keyword(s), making it more specific so the right people see it.
Delve Deeper with Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is a free Google AdWords tool that allows you to view what happens after your ad is clicked. When someone completes an action that you deem valuable—such as calling to schedule an appointment or submitting a contact form on your website—this “valuable action” is considered a conversion.
To set up and use conversion tracking, you must first identify actions that you believe are beneficial to your practice. As previously mentioned, this could include phone calls, contact form submissions, or even subscriptions to your email list. Next, a small snippet of code will need to be added to the particular pages on your website that prospective patients are directed to after clicking your ads. This code enables the tracking system to place a temporary cookie on the visitor’s computer or mobile device and record a conversion in the event they complete the prespecified action.
For phone calls, Google forwarding numbers can be created for your website and/or AdWords ad, enabling you to monitor various insights via Google’s free call tracking feature. Helpful call tracking details include where calls were made from (i.e. did someone call you once they visited your site or did they call you straight from the ad?), mobile click-to-call vs. manual dial, call start and end times, call duration, caller area code, and from what ad group the call originated. It’s important to note, however, there are limits to Google’s free call tracking tool. For example, it will not allow you to record the call, gather any caller ID information, or provide you with an itemized report of which pages the user clicked on and interacted with before they ultimately made the decision to call your practice. As a result, a third-party call tracking service is generally recommended for deeper analysis and segmentation of your Google AdWords telephone conversions.
Overall, the beauty of conversion tracking is that you’ll discover if your potential patients are turning into actual patients.
Optimize AdWords Tracking with Google Analytics
To get the most out of conversion tracking and AdWords in general, we highly recommend linking your strategy with Google Analytics. Doing so opens up a vast expanse of helpful data, including (but not limited to):
- New visits – Shows the percentage of first-time visitors to your site, as well as how much of this traffic can be credited to AdWords.
- Pages per visit and average visit duration – Shows you how many pages visitors are viewing and how long they are staying on your site.
- Bounce rate – Shows if visitors are leaving your site without accessing any other pages, which may mean your Adwords landing pages aren’t relevant to the ad.
- Keyword identification – Shows which keywords visitors used to find your website, allowing you to focus your Adwords campaign on these highly searched terms.
We could go on and on about the valuable insights that become available when Google Adwords and Google Analytics are synced, but we’ll save that for another time. The key takeaway here is that linking the two resources is definitely best practice, as it enables you to comprehensively track the efficacy of your AdWords campaign while viewing just how visitors interact with your website after clicking on your ad(s).
Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Don’t be! Rosemont Media is here to help. As a Google Premier Partner, we are recognized as being among the best of all marketing professionals and businesses that have received training, obtained certification, and been deemed trustworthy by Google itself. In fact, only 3% of all Google Partners in North America have achieved “Premier” status, distinguishing Rosemont Media as an elite choice for your online marketing needs.
If you have any more questions about measuring the success of your AdWords, or if you would like assistance in setting up and/or tracking an AdWords campaign, one of our experienced consultants will be glad to speak with you and offer support in any way possible. Simply contact Rosemont Media today.