By Neil Patel

You just started a new AdWords campaign.

You’re trying to drive some easy, instant sales to your site.

But you quickly realize that you have no idea how to tell if those visitors are converting. No clue if you’re wasting your hard-earned budget without a return.

You’re not alone.

76% of marketers are still struggling to track the ROI of their campaigns.

Even worse is when marketers think they’re tracking the effectiveness of their campaigns, but they’re doing it in the wrong way.

So it looks and seems and feels like they’re on the right track. All while budgets get squandered, and results continue to lag.

Here’s how to get started tracking your return on online advertising campaigns.

Outline What a “Conversion” is For Your Campaign

Conversion tracking can be complex.

It’s not cut-and-dry like most people think.

The first step to tracking the return on investment for an online advertising campaign is to outline what your campaign goals are.

Are you trying to build brand awareness? Are you trying to drive e-commerce sales? Consultations? Free trials?

Depending on your goals, conversion tracking will be vastly different.

For example, a conversion for e-commerce sales is quantifiable without much extra effort.

You can tell exactly what someone bought and how much you spent to acquire that customer via ads.

But what about consultations or free trials?

When AdWords shows a conversion for your campaign, it’s not a sale.

Meaning you aren’t getting a return on investment just yet. Your bank account isn’t increasing when someone signs up for a consultation.

So those conversions don’t tell the whole story.

If you’re not tracking something quantifiable, such as items sold or likes generated to your Facebook Page, then you need to start with some basic math.

If you are trying to get consultations (or other similar conversions) that don’t have a dollar amount to tie back to, you can set up a basic equation to give them value:

(Average Closed Lead Value X Rate of Lead Close) = Per Lead Value

This simple equation will give you insight into how much a lead is worth in your business, making it easier to tie back ROI to your conversions.

Set up Google AdWords Tracking

Setting up Google AdWords conversion tracking correctly is critical for measuring your ad ROI.

It helps you track data on how your campaigns are performing and whether or not you are finding success.

To get started, open up your AdWords account and navigate to the conversions section:

Here, you can begin setting up conversion tracking elements for multiple parts of your campaigns.

From basic call data to website conversions, you have a few different options:

Depending on your campaign, you might need more than one of these elements to track conversions.

For example, if you decide to run AdWords ads with call-based extensions, you’ll want more than just website tracking.

To get started, click on the element that you need to track.

The most common one will be your website conversions, or the people who buy a product or convert on your …read more

Source:: Kiss Metrics Blog

Author: Aaron