How to measure AdWords success: A practical guide

This is the third post of our “Managing your PPC” blog series. By now, you know the basics of PPC, and you’ve set up your campaigns. Today, we’ll focus on how to measure AdWords success, guiding you through the essential day-to-day monitoring practices that will help keep your Google Ads campaigns aligned with best AI marketing tools.

What should you be monitoring in your Google Ads campaign?

Once you log into Google Ads, you can see how to measure AdWords success through an overview of your campaigns dashboard, which provides a quick and clean summary of their performance. Depending on your workload, I’d recommend checking in with your campaigns on a daily basis, even if it’s just to confirm all is going to plan.

At first glance, it can be slightly overwhelming looking at all the different stats, charts and drop-down menus. For simple campaigns or a quick health check, you’re only going to need to look at a few of these.

Check your date range first

Before you panic that you’ve gone over your budget in 3 days or completely underachieved the estimated clicks, ensure you’re considering the right time frame, which is essential when learning how to measure AdWords success. If you’re the only person in your team using Google Ads, this won’t apply to you, but it’s useful to know for those working in a bigger team.

Every time a campaign ends, the date selected sticks, so when you log in, you’re viewing from the date which was previously selected. To make sure you’re getting the right data, clicks, and spend while learning how to measure AdWords success, choose the appropriate time frame you’re looking at.

Use the dashboard view

Once we’re looking at the specific dates, we can start checking all is in order. It’s worth noting that Google Ads can present your dashboard with campaigns that may not be a real snapshot of your activity. If you make changes to your ads or keywords mid-campaign, for example, it removes these from certain dashboard views.

To put this into context, Google will deactivate any existing keywords you’ve changed if you’re viewing your campaigns. If you’re doing a weekly report for your team or client, and you’ve made changes to your campaigns, you want to report with the “all campaign” views. This ensures you’ve captured any existing keywords that may have previously been used in the campaigns.

Key metrics to monitor

• Budget tracking. You should have a campaign budget, and ideally, a weekly budget. It’s always worth checking that your current spend is on target. By checking this every day, you’ll spot any campaigns that are using up a lot of the budget. If you need to increase your budget or the length of the campaign, this can be done in “AdGroup settings.”
• Cost Per Click (CPC). This is the amount it costs you when someone clicks on your ad. It will vary per keyword based on competitiveness. In each AdGroup, I’d recommend setting the maximum CPC per keyword, rather than setting an average for each keyword – remember, you want to spend the least possible.
• CPC bidding strategy. You can bid based on the position and page you’re aiming for. If your AdGroup has a generous budget, you could afford to bid higher for those top positions. Make sure you’ve added the appropriate columns to fully understand your bid strategy.

Budgeting and bidding on Google Ads campaigns

Let’s say you’ve got a large budget, and you’re trying to get your ad to show for a relatively competitive keyword. Ideally, you’ll be bidding above the “estimated first position bid.” You don’t need to bid much above that estimate, but a little higher. If you’ve got a smaller budget, you can bid for top page, and then first page bid.

Ad extensions

You can view ad extensions on the top tabs, broken down into different extension options. I’d recommend adding:

• Sitelink extensions
• Structured snippets

In this view, you can see which structured snippets have performed best for your campaign and make any necessary changes.

Clicks and CTR

The stats that you and your client are likely to be most interested in are clicks and CTR (click-through rate), as these indicate whether you’re doing things properly. To get a good idea of campaign performance, work out the weekly estimated clicks you’re going to get with your budget.

The number of clicks will determine the CTR, so the higher the number of clicks the better. There’s a lot of information out there about what the ideal CTR looks like, but I trust HubSpot . For B2B search campaigns, you want anything between 1.3–2.5%.

Be patient with changes

Things don’t happen overnight. To get a real indication of your campaign performance, it’s best to wait a week before making changes. If you’re reporting to your stakeholders on a weekly basis, this gives you a 7-day view of the campaign – leaving enough time to justify any changes.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• You need to consider “all” keywords in the AdGroup. If you make changes to keywords, Google Ads will remove the old keywords unless you have them in a particular view. If you don’t view this as a whole, you might not get accurate spend and click data.
• Changes can take longer than a week to take proper effect, so be patient and consider waiting ten days before deciding if something is working.

Report regularly

I’d highly recommend reporting to your team or client on a weekly basis. Even if it’s just to give them an idea of how your campaign is doing – whether you’re on track to hit or exceed your click target, whether the budget is under control, and if your ads are relevant for the audience you’re trying to reach.

Given that PPC campaigns can be a hefty investment, it’s crucial to monitor them closely. Understanding how to measure AdWords success will enable you to optimise your campaigns effectively and maximise your return on investment.

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