Using Google Analytics to Improve AdWords ROI

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AdWords is beyond easy to get into, which is refreshing for the most people that don't know sophisticated digital marketing strategy. The biggest questions I've seen when looking at your performance on AdWords are the following:
  1. Is this good?
  2. Can we show worth and improve?
  3. What's working the best and what stinks?
  4. Why!?!
OK, so number 4 is basically what all of this is about, but you want to understand those others. In this post, I'm going to show you how to understand each of these, and how to improve the program using Google Analytics. The goals? Make more cash. Get more leads. DO BETTER.

 1) Is this good? Reviewing AdWords vs Google Analytics Paid Search Performance

The first thing you need to understand is the attribution between AdWords and Analytics. AdWords will generally appear higher in conversions tracking than Google Analytics. AdWords basically says "if at any point someone used one of our ads to convert, then we're counting it as a conversion to AdWords". How much they are counting it is up to you to decide when you set up the platform. Here is a good list of other discrepancies and "gotchas" between analytics and AdWords. Here are the things I would pay attention to in AdWords:

  • Cost-Per-Click
  • Cost
  • Cost per Acquisition
  • Revenue
  • Conversions
  • Clicks
  • Impressions
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR)
  • Conversion Rate

I key in on CTR being at or above 3%, conversion rate between 1-3% (hopefully higher), and simply that cost goes down as revenue goes down or your ration between the two shows a highly efficient use of your money. Essentially you want to see that the money you are spending isn't close to the amount of money you are bringing in. If they are very close, then the campaign isn't efficient. Here is more information about it: cost efficiency.

After you get some of these metrics you will want to dive into Google Analytics. If you haven't done so yet, you need to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts together - learn about that here. Once you have that link, I'd go right to Acquisition>AdWords>Campaigns to compare your performance between both platforms. You will notice fewer conversions, but what I love is the deep dive you can do in Analytics.



Each of these poses a couple of different questions:

a) Do campaigns 1 and 3 entirely stink?
b) What can we do to push campaign 2 beyond even its great conversion rate?


2) Can we show worth or improve things?

You should do this for each of these 3, but right now, based on our attribution model we are seeing a poor conversion rate, but a great amount of traffic entering the site so it's time to look into assisted transactions. If you read my post about journey analytics then you know what these are, but if you haven't, go to Conversions>Multichannel>Assisted Transactions. After doing that, select "AdWords" and set your lookback window as you need. You should have a report that shows your campaigns and all the relevant assisted conversions that are a result of AdWords.



So you can see that there are some more conversions now, which is good, but is it worthwhile? I would take a look at the revenue of these, with the revenue found in your original AdWords reprot in Google Analytics and see if you are as efficient as you'd like to be. If you are a small business and don't have the money treat this as an awareness campaign, I would scrap the non-producers and invest more in the good performing campaign.

 3) What's working best and what stinks?

We knew two of the three campaigns stink, but what about the one that is good - can we maximize it? Here are things to look at to ensure your AdWords program is going to the right group of people:

  • Mobile vs Non-Mobile performance
  • Geography performance: country, state, specifically
  • AdGroup, Landing Page, and Keywords performance (done in AdWords)


After you take a look at these three things, you will have a good sense of what to optimize to make the most out of your campaigns. Yes, there could be more, but this is a baseline for you today.

 4) Why do all of this?

You need everything to be lean, efficient, and worth your time. These are targeted practices to improve your paid search presence and not waste your time. As you grow, you can do more, but set yourself a baseline based on a common-sense approach. This also continues you to get familiar with the AdWords platform and allows you to do a deeper dive on what your customer journey really looks like.

Location: Omaha, NE, USA

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