AdWords for Lawyers: How to Setup Conversion Tracking
There are few search marketing platforms as effective as Google AdWords for lawyers looking to drive traffic to their firms’ websites. One of the most important parts of launching a campaign (aside from crafting ads that draw traffic) is setting up conversion tracking to measure results. Without conversion tracking, you are basically flying blind.
Conversion tracking allows you to see what web surfers are doing once they’ve reached your page. It will let you know if your ad is actually delivering new leads, or simply pulling in uninterested people who only turn around and leave your site, reducing the ROI of your advertising budget in the process.
Knowing what happens when a visitor lands on your site after clicking one of your ads is essential for planning and optimizing your law firm’s AdWords campaigns. The data recorded by conversion tracking allows you to identify which areas of your campaigns are working or not working, so you can fine tune your bids, ad text, and keywords.
AdWords Conversion Tracking Basics
AdWords provides four basic ways for your firm to track the conversion rates of your ads:
Actions on a website – This type of tracking allows you to count a conversion whenever someone completes a certain action on your website. For example, you could count a conversion when someone clicks a particular button on your site or submits their email address to receive information or subscribe to a newsletter.
Actions with an app – App tracking allows you to count a conversion from actions such as downloading an app from the Google Play Store or completing an action within an app such as making a purchase.
Phone-related actions – It is possible to track when a potential client calls a phone number, either displayed in an ad or displayed on your web site after clicking an ad. You can also track when someone clicks (or taps) on a phone number from their mobile phone.
Offline actions – It requires much more manual tracking on your end, but it is also possible to upload data back to google in order to account for conversions that occur in the real world, such as a client walking into your office after seeing one of your ads online.
Setting Up Website Conversion Tracking
Website conversion tracking is the easiest and most common form of AdWords conversion tracking to set up. So, for the sake of simplicity and brevity, that’s what we’re going to concentrate on here.
1. To get started, sign in to your AdWords account, click on the “Tools” tab and select “Conversions” from the dropdown menu.
2. On this screen you’ll see a red button that reads, “+Conversion”. Click on that button to add a new conversion method to track. You’ll first be presented with a list of different conversion sources. Pick “Website” from the list.
3. Under the “Name” section, give this conversion a name to be displayed in reports. It could be something like “Newsletter Signup” or “Literature Download”. Choose something that will make sense to you and then click on “Done”.
4. Click on “Value” to assign a value to this type of conversion. If this type of conversion results in some kind of income for your firm, you can set the value to a static or variable amount. You can also choose to assign no value in cases where there is no monetary value associated with the conversion source. Click “Done” when you’ve finished.
5. Click on “Count” to set up how this conversion source will be counted. If you count “Every” conversion, it will count once every time someone completes the action, even if the same person does it more than once. If you choose to count “One” time, the conversion will only count the first time each person completes the action. In most cases, “One” will be the correct option. Again, click “Done” when you are finished.
6. Finally, click on “Conversion Windows” to set the length of time to count this action as a conversion after someone clicks or sees one of your ads. The “Conversion Window” setting will allow you to set the time limit for ads that have been clicked and “View-through Conversion Window” will allow you to set it for ads seen through the Display Network. Click on “Done” when you’re finished.
7. At this point you can click on “Save and continue” to save your new conversion method and get the code you’ll need to put on your website to begin tracking.
8. You should now see a page with a gray box containing the code you’ll need to place on your website. You can go back and edit settings if you’ve changed your mind about anything, or finalize this conversion source. At the bottom of the gray box you’ll see two options for saving the code for your tracking tag. Unless you are adding the code to the website yourself, you’ll want to select “Email instructions and tag” to send the new code off to your webmaster so it can be installed. And one last time, click “Done” when you’re finished.
You’re Ready to Go!
Once the code you generated has been added to your website, your conversion tracking will be functional. Simply repeat the process to add more tracking methods as needed. You can also look through Google’s help system to get details on more advanced options and instructions to customize things even further.
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