For anybody who uses PPC, they will likely have the same problem when it comes to numbers. They will weigh up in their mind the benefits of having plenty of varied data, and having so many figures that they do not know what to do with them.

Google Analytics can provide a whole host of information and useful data, but what exactly should you be using and how will this data improve your marketing strategy for PPC?

Luckily, we’ve cleared up some of the confusion and written this handy guide. We’ll show you some of the ways you can utilize Google Analytics to work with your PPC strategy and how this will improve it (see also ‘What Are The 7 Key Performance Indicators Used In PPC You Should Be Tracking?‘). 

So, if you’re looking to learn more – then read on and discover the facts!

1. Real Time Reports For Testing Your Goals 

Prior to setting out your PPC campaign strategy (see also ‘What Is PPC In Publishing?‘), you will need to ensure that your events and goals are properly set up, as this can help you to track the campaign’s results in the best possible way.

All you need to do here is open the “Real Time Report” and then select “Conversions” which will open your target page. Here, you can check if your action you’ve set works as a goal. In other words, if everything is set up correctly – the counter on the page will show it.

2. Use The Assisted Conversions Data 

You will likely already be aware that the conversion data is one of the best indicators of success online. However, when we’re talking about tracking these conversions, the average path towards these conversions will have many channels leading to your final goal.

If at some point, the channel lands somewhere else – then likely this will contribute to an assisted conversion. Luckily though, this data can be extremely useful for your PPC strategy too.

This is because assisted conversion data allows you to assess what channels were the most effective in these assisted conversions, how things altered over time, and how you might be able to change your PPC strategy based on the data that you have received.

This is actually how the advantage here is much better over Google Ads, because you can compare these various channels which also includes things like social channels and social advertising, traffic from referrals and much more.

It really is extremely rich data which you can use to improve and tweak your PPC strategy, in many ways this is often overlooked.

3. Use Your Audience Insights 

Perhaps one of the greatest tools within Google Analytics is the extraction of performances from your audience data. This means that you are able to analyze the best and indeed, the worst performing audiences for your niche.

When you have this data, you are much better suited to be able to tweak and alter your PPC strategy – based pretty much solely on your audience’s insight data. Here are some of the main ways that you could do this –

First, you can build audiences for remarketing campaigns using a variety of tools and for a magnitude of reasons. However, next and perhaps most importantly, you are able to work out how you can attract new traffic. 

You can do this by identifying the demographics and the interests of your audiences, the data of which tells you the audience’s age, geography and what they like. 

And third, you can analyze what the absolute worst performing users all have in common. Once you have worked this out, you can extract the common denominator from the equation for a better campaign. 

It’s also important that we recognize that Google Ads can be very useful for such data, but it only generates data from Google Ads specifically. Google Analytics on the other hand is able to provide you data from multiple different channels, which benefit you much more.

4. Compare The Top Metrics From Different Channels 

The metrics that show you audience behavior can be very useful. Visitors that come from places like paid search or display ads might differ from other types of visitors – and understanding these traffic types can help you strategize later down the road.

In one such way, you can reallocate your budget to certain areas depending on what is working and what is not. You should now be able to assess the positives and the negatives and your results should be able to boost.

5. Alerts 

One of the best things about using Google Analytics is the use of custom alerts. It allows you to be able to quickly change things and quickly view what is going on in terms of your traffic and your audience’s behavior. 

Once again, it’s important to note here that Google Ads can provide you change alerts when something has rapidly increased or declined, but Google Analytics goes much further and you can have a much more robust picture of what’s going on.

You can view things like how quickly your site is loading, or not loading. This is important because it affects the site’s performance and can lead to a huge number of bounce backs. Bizarrely, you can also view this data in real time too.

On top of this, you will be able to see your branded organic traffic numbers if they have increased significantly – and this is perhaps one of the best things about these alerts because it allows you to change and track your PPC campaign for brand awareness.

Final Thoughts 

Google Analytics can be one of the most useful tools that you can use to try to improve your PPC strategy. Now, while we’ve mentioned some of the most important – there are a whole host more advantages to using this tool.

We hope this guide has been of some use to you. Good luck with your PPC campaign using Google Analytics!