Are you managing your Adwords campaigns based on a hunch or are you making decisions based on actionable data? Linking your campaigns to Google Analytics will provide a treasure trove of useful information that can save you money and produce better results. The example below demonstrates how.
One of my clients was spending half their budget on a campaign that asked people to sign a pledge supporting girls’ education in Africa. The campaign went live in early 2016 and at first glance, the numbers reported in Adwords appear great.
As shown below it received a whopping 13,162 clicks in April alone — almost twice as much as the next closest campaign.
On the analytics side we see a different story however. Not one person who came from this campaign has donated this year.
This immediately poses a question. Should half their advertising budget be allocated to a campaign that doesn’t bring in any donations? This is especially troubling when you consider that the money could be spent on other campaigns that could be generating revenue.
Before we give up on it though let’s look at what they are doing on the site. Here we can see the pages they visited in 2016.
Clearly, they are not delving further into the site to learn more about the organization. Can something be done to steer them in the right direction? Perhaps the post pledge thank you page needs to do a better job of encouraging them to explore the rest of the site. The same goes for any follow-up emails they receive.
We can also determine that more than half this audience lives in Africa — not surprising given that the pledge focuses on educating girls in Africa.
Now, let’s take a look at where actual donors on the site live when looking at all site visitors.
If donations are what we are after, then limiting the girls’ education campaign to only the Americas could lead to better results.
We can’t know for sure what will work until we make these adjustments but peering into the the data allows us to ask the right questions and gives us a fighting chance at achieving better results.