5 Indispensable Google AdWords Tricks You Need to Know

Source: Neil Patel

Google AdWords can be one of the most complicated PPC platforms out there.

There are hundreds of different tabs and sections to focus on, and a thousand more metrics to worry about.

On top of that, the settings and bidding options can tie you up for hours.

You could potentially spend hours on AdWords every single day and barely make any progress on optimizing or setting up a campaign.

But you can’t give up on it. AdWords is king when it comes to search network advertising.

In fact, businesses make an average of $2 for every $1 spent!

It’s one of the fastest ways to drive new sales on your website.

The search network has high intent when it comes to purchasing.

Which means if you are driving clicks, you will likely be driving tons of sales, too.

It’s a cheap and effective way to bring in extra revenue and sales.

But the difficulty of it tends to drive marketers away fast. Spending hours on the platform every single day to grow your business isn’t an option.

Thankfully, there are a few indispensable AdWords tricks that you can implement to save yourself time.

Here are 5 Google AdWords tips that you need to know and use right now.

1. UTM tracking for better data

Let’s first start with UTM codes and tracking. They can be a lifesaver for your campaign and subsequent analytics.

It’s the easiest way to ensure that you’re tracking everything you can.

First, consider the following three questions to figure out if you need to get going on UTM codes today:

Which campaign is driving the most traffic on your site?

Which campaign has a longer average time on site?

Which campaign has a higher bounce rate?

If you don’t know the answers to these, then it’s time for UTM codes.

So, what is a UTM code?

Here’s an example:

Essentially, UTM codes are used to track hits on your URL or landing page so that it doesn’t show up as simply paid search in Analytics.

Instead, you can track everything from keywords to campaigns.

Here’s the definition, according to Google:

Pretty self-explanatory, right?

And Google is so helpful, they even show you UTM codes. Here’s what the UTM codes will look like in your Analytics Dashboard once you’ve set them up:

This is the best way to easily track specific campaigns to see how they are driving traffic and how that traffic behaved on site.

It can help you understand which campaigns are more receptive to your content, which audiences worked, and which didn’t.

The data you get from these trackers is vitally important to the success of your AdWords campaigns.

If you are targeting a keyword that is driving tons of clicks, you can see what visitors’ on-site behavior is like and whether or not they are turning into conversions.

You can also see if that traffic is bouncing immediately or staying to read the entire landing page.

If you’re ready to get started with UTM tracking today, it’s incredibly easy.

We can begin by using the Google Analytics UTM Developer Tool:

Here you want to make sure to hit the four main fields.

1. Landing page
2. Source
3. Campaign name
4. Keyword

In the first box, simply paste in your landing page URL.

Next, mark the campaign source as “AdWords.”

Set the campaign name as your AdWords campaign or Ad Group and then add one of your keywords.

Next, repeat this process for all your keywords and campaigns.

If you want to add more parameters, the site gives you more information on what you can add:

Once you’ve created a new batch of UTM links, it’s time to add them into AdWords.

There are a few ways to do this.

The first way is to simply add each URL as your “Final URL” in each AdWords ad.

To get started, click on an existing ad that you are running and paste your new code as the “Final URL”:

If you want to save a bit of time, you can actually add UTM codes to an entire campaign or account.

Here’s how:

First, head to your “Shared library”:

Next, head down to the “URL options” tab and click “View”:

Now, enable “Auto-tagging.” From here, you’ll want to set up the “Tracking template” that will apply to our campaigns:

With this auto-tagging tool, you can set up tracking templates for almost anything.

For example, a basic keyword tracking template would look like this:

Or you can track the device, too:

The options are almost limitless, and you can add multiple tags in the template.

Setting up your UTM codes will get you a more accurate picture of where your traffic is going and how they interact on site.

It will save you countless hours of data inspection and give you a much better picture of how different campaigns perform.

2. Close any gaps with offline call tracking

With easy scripts to set up, AdWords is great for conversion tracking.

Like when someone lands on your landing page and converts.

They get directed to a thank you page and it’s recorded in AdWords for you to see.

But what happens when you drive tons of phone-call conversions?

How do you track what happens when they occur offline?

For example, I’ve worked with tons of marketers who dominate AdWords with phone-call conversions:

But how do you know if any of these 338 call conversions actually converted?

Where on Earth did they actually come from?

What campaign drove the calls? What landing page?

But just like with UTM codes, you want to track everything.

If you don’t know the catalyst that drove the phone call, it’s more or less a guessing game.

And AdWords gives you some of the worst call data:

To view your call data, head to your “Dimensions” page under “Call details.”

And all you get is start and end time of the call, call duration, area code, and call type.

These aren’t exactly actionable metrics.

So…

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