Setting Goals in Google AdWords and Setting Yourself up for Success

When people need to find information, what do you usually hear them say? “I’ll Google it!” are often the words heard. It’s estimated that Google processes more than three billion searches a day… yes, we said three billion. With that type of statistic, it’s vital that your Google ad is on point and that you set goals in Google AdWords that are reachable for your marketing campaign.

What are goals in Google AdWords?

In order to know if anything in life is successful, you need to set goals. Google AdWords is no different. Goals here refer to how often users complete certain actions that you have set up. In Google AdWords, goals are referred to as conversions. A conversion happens when someone clicks your ad and then completes the action that you set up in the goal. Have they submitted a form? Have they completed a purchase? These are both types of goals you can set for your ad in Google AdWords. You need to specifically define what your goals are for your marketing campaign to know if your campaign is working.

Types of Goals in Google AdWords

There are four different types of goals in Google AdWords. Goals can be broken up into the following categories:

Destination
Duration
Event
Sessions per page

A destination goal is when the user has arrived at a page you were hoping he or she would visit. After the goal has been reached, a thank-you screen may appear. In this type of goal you can also set up a funnel to determine how you expect the web traffic to flow. This will let you see if many users are exiting your site on a specific page before completing a goal you set. If you see a pattern, then you know it’s time to revamp. This is a useful tool because of the insight it can provide as to what is motivating people to click and what isn’t.

If a user spends a specific amount of time that you’ve set for them to stay on a page, then they’ve met your duration goal.

An event goal is reached when a user clicks on something that triggers an event, like watching a video or being directed to another page.

In a sessions per page goal, the user has viewed a particular page the number of times you planned. If you wanted a user to view a page three times during one visit and he or she did, then the goal has been met.

Tracking Goals

Each goal can have a monetary value associated with it so you can decide how much the conversion is worth to your business. Google Analytics keeps tracks of all of these conversions for you. They give them to you in a series of reports so you can see if your goals are being met. By linking your Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts you can easily keep track of what’s working and what isn’t. One thing to remember is to keep goals simple. People are not going to jump through hoops when they are searching and visiting sites. The easier you can make your goals to align with your marketing campaign, the more successful you will be.

The expert team at Portside Marketing can help you determine your Google Adwords goals and track the success rate with Google Analytics. If something is not working, let us work with you to develop a new plan that will generate a greater success level.

Tips on goals in Google Adwords

As you’re thinking about what goals you want to set up in Google Adwords, there are some things to consider:

You can only track 20 goals at a time per reporting view. If you want to be able to track more you need to create an additional view for that property or replace a goal you no longer need.
You need to set up goals in your Analytics account before you can track them.
You can’t delete goals but you can stop recording data for a goal.

Keep these things in mind as you move forward in the world of goals for Google AdWords.

How to set up goals for Google AdWords

Google AdWords and Google Analytics are best friends. You need to first make sure you have a Google Analytics account and sync it with your AdWords account. Be sure Analytics is ready to track all the pages you want it to. Once you have this set go to your Google Analytics account and look at the various goals you can choose from for each page. Check the ones you want to set up. Once you have them set be sure to click on “Verify this Goal”. By doing so, a conversion rate will be calculated based on your data from the past seven days.

Once you’ve linked up both accounts and have all your goals set it’s important to wait 1-2 hours for all of the imports to work. Then you can start keeping track of your goals.

By setting goals and tracking them, you can easily find out if your AdWords campaign is giving you the results you need.