If you're investing in Google Ads then you will want to understand how your advertising goals are performing.
The Google Ads platform offers a multitude of metrics and you could spend hours wading through the data to gain insight on your spend.
When you're starting out, all of these metrics can be confusing. So we've put together a lis of metrics to be familiar with, including a couple of tools that will help you manage the account easily.
Top 10 Metrics To Review and Understand
1. Impressions
An impression is counted when user searches for a product or service that triggers your ad to appear. It doesn't always mean that the user actually 'saw' your ad. For example, they might have clicked on another company's ad before they saw yours. It simply means that your ad was offered to the user following their search.
2. Cost
This is how much you have spent on your campaign. Impressions are free. You only pay when a user clicks the ad.
3. Clicks
A click is counted when the user clicks on an ad that appeared after they searched for a product or service. You are charged at this point for that one click.
If a user clicks the ad and they see an error message ie the URL is broken or your website is down, then you are still charged for this click.
4. Average CPC
This is the average cost you have been charged for clicks. Not every click costs the same. It depends on the keyword/s that triggered the ad. For example, "solar quote" might cost $3.50 per click and "solar advantage" might cost you $7.10 per click.
5. Conversions
A conversion is counted after a user clicks on your ad and then takes some action. For example, they might sign up to your newsletter or download your eBook.
This is a key metric that indicated whether your campaign is working successfully or not.
6. Labels
This is not so much a metric as a handy tool that you can use when you have multiple campaigns to keep track of.
Once you Label a campaign, you can filter results more easily. This means you can keep track of spend and results for a specific campaign, as well as the campaign as a whole.
7. Conversion Rate
The conversion rate calculates how many times a user converted one of your advertising goals. If you're running a large campaign, this is a great metric to view when trying to decide which ad is performing better.
For example, you would keep the ads with conversion rates of 7% and turn off the ads only converting at 1%.
8. CTR
CTR stand for click through rate. This metric is telling you the average of impressions vs clicks. This metric indicates how compelling your ad is and whether users are finding what they're looking for after a search.
9. Cost Per Conversion
The Cost Per Conversion metric tells you the average cost you've been charged for a conversion. You business needs to decide what a profitable cost per conversion would be. For example, you might be happy to pay $37.00 per conversion for a user who clicks your ad, calls you, organises a quote and purchases a new solar system for his home. However if the cost per conversion was more like $137 /conversion, then you might turn that ad off and invest more in other ads with a lower cost per conversion.
10. Search Impression Share
The Search Impression Share is a handy metric that shows where your business sits in the search results. You and your competitors are bidding against each other for search results, and this metric will list who is getting the most impressions share for those terms.
For example, if your ad has the opportunity to be shown 100 times, but you are only showing 20% of the time, this is an indication that you need to optimise your campaign.
Kylie Browne
