Using Google Tag Manager To Properly Optimize Google AdWords Campaigns

By Elisa Frazier

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Without conversion tracking, digital advertising would be the equivalent of putting your brand on a billboard and hoping someone sees it. Digital advertising today is all about conversion tracking! 

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What is A Conversion?

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A conversion is an action - like a click on a text ad or a view of a video ad - that is counted based on a preset definition determined by your business. For example, the definition of a conversion could be a purchase being made.

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Simply put, if you don't have the ability to monitor who's viewing your advertisements and how they interact with them, then there will be no understanding of what resonates or makes sense for a particular customer base, and in turn means wasted spend! 

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Conversion tracking itself is important, but it also needs to be done right. Especially if you have a custom website, many events to track, and/or want to scale using machine learning. A strong tag management strategy and data collection system will enable you to properly optimize your ads. This can all be accomplished using a Google tool – Google Tag Manager (GTM).

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Tracking Conversions With Google Tag Manager

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GTM is a great tool that is used to measure conversions without any code. It allows you to find the reasons why people convert on your site. It will also help you optimize what content converts the best so future ads become even more effective! Check out our blog about implementing Google Tag Manager to track conversions for your Google AdWords account. 

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Why You Need To Properly Optimize Your AdWords Campaigns

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You Have A Customer-Facing Website

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This is a great tool for anyone with custom websites. Without a tool like GTM, you would need a developer to modify your site’s code to set up a conversion tracking system and would have to run separate analyses to learn from the data. 

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You Have A Lot of Events To Track

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The more events that are available to track, the better machine learning can get at learning how to optimize your ads and targeting. For instance, when you are only tracking a thank you page, there are many other preliminary events that could be tracked and used to optimize.

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To read more about how Google Tag Manager helps optimize websites with long flows or many events to track, check out our case study about our client SoloSuit here (I will add SoloSuit to our case studies!).

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You Want To Use Machine Learning To Scale

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Machine learning makes scaling marketing strategies easier. GTM allows machine learning to work its magic, so you don't have to be in Google AdWords making optimizations as often. It also makes updating or changing tracking on website content easier than ever! 

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It allows marketers to switch objectives from preliminary stages – maximize clicks or manual CPA – to more matured stages – target CPA and target ROAS – where the account has learned and therefore can optimize. Additionally, machine learning can maximize conversions because the algorithm is able to track and optimize for the right events. This helps get the right customers for cheaper.

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Conversion tracking is vital to creating a successful growth marketing strategy. Properly optimizing your tracking with GTM ultimately helps businesses improve conversion rates and spend more effectively, since it is capable of advanced tag management and machine learning.

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