Working Collaboratively With Your Agency By Knowing How To Spot Errors In Your Conversion Tracking.
Whether you’re managing your ads or working with an agency to handle your campaigns, it is important to stay on top of things, especially key budget items…like your ads and the people responsible for making them profitable.
We’re here to help you. Whether you work with an agency like us, are looking to work with an agency (like us…😉 hint-hint ), or are just looking for ways to work with people on your campaigns, this post walks you through how to set up and make working with others profitable and pleasurable (hopefully!).
SETTING A TANGIBLE GOAL FOR YOUR ADS
Whether or not you started working with an agency, you most likely already have a tangible goal you want to achieve for your brand, product, or service. If not, you should set those up first. What goal do you want to achieve in your ads? How simple, measurable and clear (for telling others) have you made that goal?
Purchases for this X product? Newsletter sign-ups? X number of downloads for your app? Whatever your goal, this should be a tangible business goal – the more specific the better. This will be your measure if your ads are working for you. Work through your goals with your agency so you can create the best campaign structure for your specific target.
When it’s time to review your ads, a good agency will show you the numbers and will give importance to real numbers based on your goals – not on metrics that make them look better.
Vanity metrics, as they’re called, look great on paper, but at the end of the day, they’re just that — vanity — and your ROI won’t be affected by them.
SPOTTING COMMON CONVERSION TRACKING ERRORS
Lots can go wrong with campaigns, including tracking your conversions. If conversions are not tracked correctly, then you might never know where the magic is really happening. Your ads may look good but you might have no idea where conversions are taking place or what to fix to improve them. Ask your team: Have your campaigns been set up to track your conversions accurately?
Here are some usual errors that you or your agency can commit when tracking your conversions. Knowing what possible errors you need to look out for can help you prevent them from affecting your campaigns and account.
1. Mismatched Conversions
Google Analytics & Google AdWords accounts can report two different groups of statistics. To avoid any mismatch conversions, link these accounts together. All data from both accounts will be synchronized once the link is established.
Learn how to link Google Analytics & Ads accounts
Having these 2 accounts linked will provide a detailed view of your ads’ performance and you’ll be able to allot your budget wisely.
2. Tracking The Wrong Page
You must think this is pretty basic stuff, and it is… Unfortunately, it is also a way-too-common error in tracking campaign conversions.
Double-check with your team if the correct page is targeted on the ad and the correct tracking code has been added.
Your team and your agency must be on the same track during the planning, creation, and execution of your campaigns.
Set-up your conversion tracking in easy steps. Download Freebie
3. Incorrect URLs
An extra slash or dot can hurt your conversion tracking. If you’re using a specific URL as a target for your ads, you’ve got to copy & paste the exact URL to make sure there are no typos. URLs are case-sensitive and one tiny mistake can ruin your conversion tracking entirely.
Now that you’re aware of the most common conversion tracking errors, you’ve want to do this step before you properly launch your ads:
TEST, TEST, TEST!
Test your ads and know what would work or not ahead of time. Google Ads has made it easy for advertisers to create more effective campaigns, reducing the risk of wasted budget on ineffective ads.
Your ad account is equipped with a Campaign Experiment feature that lets you test your ads.
Create and set up your ad first before you can launch an experiment.
You and your agency should take advantage of this feature. You don’t have to launch your ads blindly and wait for the end results. Testing your ads beforehand can help you get data early and make smarter decisions sooner, saving you in the long run.
Now that you’re aware of these common mistakes, how do you make sure you and your agency work together—so everyone has what they need to make good decisions, and you achieve your business goals?
Monitoring and follow up by your agency
Communication is the key especially when you’re entrusting a part of your marketing to an agency. It’s your right as a client, and an agency’s responsibility to prove results, and if those results aren’t met, to show solutions to get there.
Regular reporting ensures that there is traction, consistent information sharing and a timely way for you to make comparisons (week, month, year, etc.). Make sure they come to you in a way that you can understand and work with the data. It’s ok to demand that of your agency. It shouldn’t be confusing. That only prevents you from working collaboratively.
Get your agencies’ recommendation
When you’ve already established a regular schedule for reporting, always get feedback from your agency regarding which ads to continue or which ads to stop.
You can also discuss and ask for recommendations to start using a few KPIs for your agency to monitor.
After going through the results with your Agency, at the end of the day what matters are your business goals and the benefit to the business. We know that it can be a difficult process, one with successes and failures in ad sets, campaigns, and results. Most times goals are achieved, but sometimes, things are difficult. Campaigns can be wrongly timed, need reworking or go in a different direction altogether. How many times have new ad rules tripped up a brand new campaign? Too many to count.
But the truth is if you are working with up-to-date information from your agency and you’re all working collaboratively, you can get to the point where goals are achieved. The key is ensuring everyone comes to the table together with that in mind as your goals as the focus.