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Conversion Tracking: What is it, Why you need it, How to use it?

Tracking conversions within your The Next Ad Suite and Google Ads account enables you to know and understand whether or not your current efforts are bringing the results you desire. This article covers the major benefits of tracking conversions of your Search campaigns, the value of conversion tracking to your business and how to utilize its power to sustain long-term growth.

So, you’ve started advertising on Google and you’ve got a nice number of ads running – great job! Of course, you’d like to know how effective these ads are in relation to the reasons why you’ve set them up in the first place. 

Maybe you were looking to increase traffic to a certain landing page, boost the views of a video, generate more newsletter sign-ups or drive more sales on your website?

Whatever it may be, you won’t find out how many of these ads actually resulted in the actions you were hoping for, unless you start using a conversion tracking tool! Tracking conversions enables you to gather data on how consumers are interacting with your ads. 

Based on these insights, you’ll be able to fine-tune your campaigns to drive more traffic to your website, increase calls or generate more customers! But before we dive into the nitty-gritty of conversion tracking, it’s important that you understand what a conversion exactly is!

What are conversions and what is conversion tracking?

Conversion tracking allows you to see what happens after a customer interacts with your ads – whether they purchased a product, signed up for your newsletter, made a call to your business, or downloaded your app. When a customer completes an action that you’ve defined as valuable, these customer actions are called conversions.

Depending on what is most relevant to your business, you’ll choose to keep track of a certain number and a few types of conversions. While you don’t have to keep track of every conversion goal you can pick, it is generally good to collect useful data. Even though you might not ‘need’ the data now, it could come in handy in the future!

Why should you use conversion tracking?

As we’ve mentioned before, the ultimate reason for conversion tracking is to see how effective your ads are, in terms of consumer interactions and your conversion goals. When tracking conversions, you’ll be able to:

•  See which keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns are performing best at driving the conversions you are looking for. 

•  Understand your return on investment (ROI), which enables you to make better-informed decisions about your advertising spend for your next campaigns. 

•  Use different types of Smart Bidding strategies that will help you automatically optimise your campaigns according to your conversion goals.

•  Get a clear image of the path your customers are taking before they convert. This could be across (i.e.) different devices and/or browsers. 

How does conversion tracking work?

Conversion Tracking starts with you creating a Conversion Tracker, by selecting a conversion action in your TNA Suite or Google Ads account. You can use conversion tracking to track the following kinds of actions:

•  Website actions: Purchases, sign-ups, and other actions that customers complete on your website. 

•  Supported in Google Search Autopilot

•  Phone calls: Calls directly from your ads, calls to a phone number on your website, and clicks on a phone number on your mobile website. 

•  Supported in Google Search Autopilot

•  App installs and in-app actions: Installs of your Android or iOS mobile apps, and purchases or other activity within those apps.

•  Import: Customer activity that begins online but finishes offline, such as when a customer clicks an ad and submits a contact form online, and later signs a contract in your office.

•  Local actions: Actions that are counted whenever people interact with an ad that’s specific to a physical location or store. 

Technically, the conversion tracking process works a bit differently for the various types of conversions. For each type, aside from offline conversions, however, it usually works like this:

• Conversions tracked with manually placed tracking tags

Add a conversion tracking tag, or code snippet, to your website or mobile app code. A temporary cookie is placed on a computer or mobile device, each time a person clicks on your ads from the Google Search results page.

Once the person completes the conversion goal you’ve predefined, the conversion tracker will recognise the placed cookie and record a conversion.

• Conversion tracked without manually placed tracking tags

For some types of conversions, you won’t have to manually place a tag on your website or mobile app. If you want to track phone call conversions from your call extension or call-only ads, you can use a Google forwarding telephone number. When this number from your ad is used, you’ll be able to track details like call duration, call start and end time, and caller area code.

This can also be done with app downloads and in-app purchases from the Google Play store. 

After successfully setting up conversion tracking you’ll be able to record conversion data for your campaigns, ads groups, ads and keywords – helping you to better understand how your advertising efforts help you achieve your business goals!

Now that you’ve got a good understanding of conversion tracking, it’s time to set up conversion tracking for your Google Search Autopilot campaigns!

A complete step-by-step guide to set up your Conversion Tracker in the Google Search Autopilot

  1. Enable expert mode via the champion toggle on the right top menu
  2. Go to Conversion Trackers on the left-hand side
  3. Click Create Tracker
  4. Select the type of conversion (or conversion action) you would like to track 
    1. Website: track sales and other actions on your website
    2. Track calls from your ads or your website
  5. Select the Action, select one of the following:
    1. Lead: a person interested in your product or service shared contact information
    2. Purchase: a person buys your product or service (most frequently used) 
    3. Page view: a person views a particular page on your website
    4. Sign up: a person registers for an event or newsletter
    5. Other
  6. Insert a Conversion name, The name will appear in the Conversion Tracker overview
  7. Insert the Conversion value and its Conversion count, you can choose between:
    1. Use the same value for each conversion
    2. Use different values for each conversion
  8. Set a Conversion window
    1. Conversions can happen days after a person interacts with your ad. Select the maximum time after an ad interaction that you want to count conversions.
    2. 30 days is recommended
  9. Select a View-through conversion window
    1. Select the maximum time after a person views your ad that you want to count view-through conversions
    2. 1 day is recommended
  10. Include in Conversions
    1. This setting lets you decide if these conversions should be included in your “Conversions” and “Conversion value” columns. If this setting is set on “No”, data will still appear in the “All conv.” column. Smart Bidding strategies–Target CPA, Target ROAS, and ECPC–use the data in this column, so this setting determines which conversions your Smart Bidding optimises for.
  11. Select the desired Attribution model
    1. The attribution model determines how much credit each click gets for your conversions.
      1. Last click
      2. First click
      3. Linear
      4. Time decay is recommended 
      5. Position based 
  12. Complete all fields, check again your settings and click next to create the Tracker
  13. Implement your Tag Snippet into your website. You arrive at Tag Snippet Setup and bump into Instructions.
  14. Select the framework (code) your page uses
  15. Copy the unique global site tag code and place it into the head code of your website.
  16. Select either Page Load or Click as your event snippet and copy-paste it into the body of your desired page.
  17. Click Done when you have implemented the tag.
  18. Edit your tag or just need to see the code again? Click on the </> at the right side of the tracker. Or click on the 3 dots to edit/remove your tag.

Can’t figure it out? Don’t hesitate to send a message to our support team by sending them a message in the chat or by sending an email to support@tnasuite.com!

That’s it!

The benefits of tracking your conversions are indisputable –  measuring how your campaigns perform, understanding how customers interact with your ads, and being able to fine-tune your campaigns to drive your desired conversions! 

Are you looking for a way to easily create Google Search text ads, but are you not sure how? Then definitely give our free Google Search Autopilot tool a shot! Within just a few minutes, you can have your first Google Search ads up and running – no prior experience needed! Create your account and receive up to €120 in ad spend for free in the second month of using the platform!

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