Performance indicators for Google Ads: the 7 most important KPIs.

[ivykhan885]

Google Ads campaigns are an essential lever for your business and its development. These ads offer instant visibility for a much lower cost than traditional marketing. Once they are set up, it is important to regularly analyze the statistics in order to know the areas for improvement. In web marketing, this is what we call KPIs: Key Performance Indicators or ICP (Key Performance Indicators) in French.

Google Analytics and Google Ads are then your best allies in your analysis! You can find hundreds of indicators there, but rest assured, by focusing on the main ones, you can already have a fairly precise overview. Linov therefore gives you the 7 most important KPIs to probe to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns on Google.

Return on advertising spend (ROAS)
This KPI corresponds to the return on each advertising investment you make. It is calculated by dividing your turnover generated via Google Ads by the amount of your expenses for the campaign (for example, if you spend €1,000 on a campaign and generate €5,000 in turnover thanks to it, you spend €1 to earn €5).

From a purely strategic point of view and outside of any financial consideration usa phone number list using ROAS is relevant to identify the most successful advertising campaigns. Its calculation can also be combined with an A/B testing approach . This methodology consists of launching two advertising campaigns at the same time and comparing their results.

ROAS should not be confused with ROI, a better-known and more commonly used indicator in marketing strategy. The latter is defined by calculating the profits of a web marketing campaign by adding the margin rate.
Cost per Conversion / Acquisition
There are many acronyms to remember in the field of SEA (paid search) , but CPA (cost per acquisition) is an important metric to know. An effective CPA is at the heart of any acquisition strategy, it is essential to the sustainability of a business.

The CPA evaluates the amount to be invested for a specific action to be carried out (for example: purchase made, landing page form filled out, newsletter subscription, etc.). This value represents how much a sale or the acquisition of a new customer or prospect cost you .

This KPI is particularly relevant when the customer action is not easily quantifiable, such as for lead acquisition or phone call tracking . In this case, it would be more complicated to calculate the ROAS because it is not possible to precisely measure the turnover generated by the campaigns. Therefore, the CPA is very useful.

A good CPA should necessarily be as low as possible since it is what you invest for a customer obtained. However, it can happen that it is high because not all prospects are converted into customers after clicking on the sponsored link.

The number of conversions
ROAS and CPA are based on the amounts spent during campaigns but they do not provide information on the number of conversions generated . As a reminder, a conversion is the completion of a desired action (purchase, validation of a form on a landing page, clicking on a button, phone call, etc.) and has the effect of increasing the company's turnover. Obviously, the higher the number of conversions, the better! It is therefore important to analyze it regularly in order to know if the actions taken have an impact and to adjust and optimize your campaigns if necessary.

Another similar indicator: the conversion rate . This is the ratio between the number of clicks on a sponsored link and the number of conversions obtained. This rate must be as high as possible so that the return on advertising investment is interesting for the company.

The number of clicks
The number of clicks is also to be taken into account because it allows you to assess the volume of interactions obtained from your audience. It is one of the most used indicators and for good reason, it constitutes the very basis of a Google Ads campaign!

It is also important to look at the CPC (Cost per click) . It refers to the price you will pay each time an Internet user clicks on your ad. This CPC is variable and one might think that the higher the budget, the better it will be. But this is not entirely true since the CPC depends a lot on the relevance of the keywords , the quality of the ad or even that of the landing page.

The number of impressions
Impressions are the total number of times your ad was shown to users. This number of impressions depends on a variety of factors: ad type, keyword, bid, and landing page. Impression volume is an important metric to track closely. If you notice a drop in impressions, this data can be used to adjust your strategy and focus on other keywords that may be more relevant to your audience.

The number of impressions is particularly interesting for awareness campaigns since the goal is to show your ads to as many people as possible.

Click-through rate (CTR)
CTR is an essential KPI because it allows you to understand the conversion rate of your ads. The click-through rate is determined by a ratio between views (impressions) and clicks on your ad.

By analyzing this performance indicator on your ads, you can identify which content most encourages your customers to take action. It is necessary to test several ads in order to find the combination where you will obtain the highest CTR, and therefore to define which content is likely to please your potential customers the most. It is possible to set up what is called an A/B testing strategy, where two different ads are put in competition in order to identify the one that works best.

The quality score

This metric should not be overlooked because working with the Quality Score allows you to significantly reduce costs per click, which is essential for a more profitable campaign and a better return on investment. This quality score reflects the reliability of your brand to the customer and the information provided in your ads and landing pages. This quality score is rated from 1 to 10 and is assigned to each of your keywords. Google then relies on one of its famous algorithms.

It is a whole, an eco-system. The goal is to tend the average CPC of your keywords downwards, in order to hope for more clicks and therefore more conversions. Among these factors, the Quality Score is calculated on three essential points: the relevance of the landing page, the relevance of the ads and the click rate.