Landing Page Data: The Key to Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Michael Cooney

Sep 17, 2020

Next time you're going through your Google Ads conversion tracking data, think about this:

A recent survey revealed that 64% of brands plan to increase PPC budgets in the coming year. To do that, you've got to identify your best ads. You know you want to spend more on PPC, but how do you know which ads deserve increased spend?

Part I: The Current State of Google Ads Optimization

Marketers currently measure and optimize Google Ads using the following metrics:

Impressions
Click-through-rate (CTR)
Conversions
Cost-per-click

All these metrics have one thing in common; they aren’t directly related to sales. What if we used a better metric? In fact, we can. Leads should be the guiding data point marketers use for Google Ads conversion tracking, and leads can be tracked by capturing conversions on each Ad’s respective landing page.

Right now, marketers have to sift through too many non-revenue metrics to make conclusions about how to adjust spend. There’s a more sales-centric way to find out which ads deserve more spend; track landing page data to find out which pages deliver the most valuable leads.

Let’s say each of your Google Ads sends users to a specific landing page. You can measure ad performance by identifying the best leads that come in through each landing page.

Before we go on, let’s define your “best leads.”

You should already be disqualifying junk leads and sending only qualified leads to the sales team. So, one criteria for your ‘best leads’ is that they’re qualified leads.

Another criteria for your best leads is that they have high sales value. Your best leads are also your most valuable leads, so make sure you can assign value to leads and track those valuable leads back to the landing pages they came from.

Part II: Capturing landing page conversions

When we say ‘conversions’ we’re referring to the following actions:

Form-fills
Live chats
Phone calls
Transactions.

Here’s why you should track every conversion back to the landing page and Google Ad

At the end of the month, you’ll be making decisions about which Google Ads deserve increased spend and which need to be cancelled due to poor performance. You’re likely basing these decisions on Google Ads conversion tracking data, so that data has to be accurate.

After all. marketing budgets hang in the balance.

To ensure accuracy in your conversion data, track every new lead back to the marketing source.

When someone clicks on your Google Ad and comes to your landing page, they’re presented with multiple options for how to convert; they can fill out a form, call your business, start w live chat, or make a purchase.

If you can capture every kind of conversion and tie it to a lead, then tie that lead to a landing page, you have a trove of data about that lead. You know which Google Ad they clicked on, You know the landing page content they were interested in. You can read call or chat transcripts to see what the lead is interested in.

You can produce reports that look like this, revealing which landing pages produced your best leads.

Pairing this report with your knowledge of which ads go to which pages allows you to optimize Ads extremely efficiently.

This kind of data empowers you to make extremely accurate decisions about future ad spend.

Tracking leads from landing pages lets you capture every lead that performs any of these conversion actions. Tying a lead to a landing page will also tie the lead to the Google Ad.

By tracking landing page conversions, you ensure that every time someone gets in touch with your business, you know which landing page they came from. That landing page data is richer data than you get from just tracking conversions from Google Ads.

Plus, endless possibilities emerge when you can dig deeper into the conversion/lead data.

Next, we/ll dive into what it means to “dig deeper into lead data.

Part III: Dig deeper by qualifying leads and adding sales value

You can optimize Google Ads more accurately if you factor in lead quality and lead value. Lead quality refers to qualifying and disqualifying leads. Get spammers and solicitors out of your lead data by disqualifying them before they reach the sales team.

Marketers can also optimize Google Ads even more efficiently by tracking the potential sales value or real sales value of every lead.

Lead tracking platforms allow you to set up automatic parameters that qualify or value leads for you. For instance, knowing the lead’s landing page can tell you which products/services the lead is interested in. Businesses can automatically value the lead based on the value of that product/service.

For a car dealership, this type of data can go into a chart like this.

If you know which products your leads are interested in, you can make better keyword decisions and optimize your landing pages to drive valuable leads.

Every type of business will have a different process for valuing Google Ad leads because different businesses have different ideal conversion types; some get their best leads from phone calls, some prefer eCommerce transactions.

Maybe the business prioritizes phone call conversions more than form-fill conversions. If someone is interested enough to call your business, they’re a hotter lead than someone who fills out a form or starts a live chat. This chart from a BIA/Kelsey study shows that over 66% of phone call leads are of good or excellent quality. The fact that phone call leads are even more valuable than in-person leads tells us all we need to know about the importance of call tracking.

Some businesses might want to prioritize the ads that deliver leads worth at least $1,000. That’s why it’s so important to tie lead value to the landing pages for each Google Ad. It allows you to identify those wasteful Ads that deliver leads that are qualified, but not very valuable.

Ready to start making decisions based on lead data?

If a Google Ad is driving people to a landing page and they’re converting, you know your Google Ad might be working. You don’t know for certain though, until you qualify leads and measure sales value. When you know which ads are driving your most valuable qualified leads, you know those ads are working and you should increase ad spend.

By taking all this information into account when performing Google Ads conversion tracking, you can actually prioritize the Ads that are generating your best, most valuable leads.