Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration

Agenda

• Campaign tracking and AdWords integration

• • • Analyze all Marketing Campaigns

• • • How to Track your Campaigns

• • • Integration with AdWords

• • • Linking AdWords to Analytics

• • • Autotagging Links

• • • Why Autotagging?

Analyze all Marketing Campaigns

• Google Analytics allows you to track and analyze all of your marketing campaigns such as:

• Paid search campaigns

• Banner ads

• Emails

• Other programs

How to track your Campaigns

• Google Analytics allows to track your marketing campaign URLs in two ways:

• • Autotagging in AdWords

• • Manually Tagging Links

• Autotagging your links in AdWords:

• For AdWords campaigns, enable keyword autotagging which allows Google Analytics to automatically populate reports with click, cost, and other data for every keyword you buy.

• In order to enable autotagging, youll need to link your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts

How to track your Campaigns

• Manually tagging all other links

• • The second way to track campaigns is to manually tag links. So, for example, you could tag the links in an email message with campaign-identifying information.

• • You may also choose to manually tag AdWords links if you do not wish to enable autotagging.

• • The tags are campaign variables that you append to the end of your URLs.

Linking AdWords to Analytics

• • By linking Google Analytics to your AdWords account, you can get advanced reporting that measures performance and ROI for your AdWords campaigns.

• • Within AdWords, click the Analytics tab to link your accounts.

• • The AdWords login that youre using will need administrator privileges in Analytics in order to link the accounts.

• • If you dont already have an Analytics account, you can click the Analytics tab and create one.

Linking AdWords to Analytics

• • When you link your accounts, you'll have the option of enabling "Destination URL Autotagging. This option allows you to differentiate your paid ads from organic search listings and referrals.

• • You can choose to tag your AdWords keywords manually if you decide not to take advantage of this feature.

• • Your cost data -- the information about clicks and keyword spending -- will be applied once you link your accounts. If you don't want cost data imported into a particular profile, you can edit the profile settings and de-select the cost data option -- after you've completed the linking process.

Linking AdWords to Analytics

• • It is possible to link one Analytics account to one AdWords account only.

• • For administration purposes, you will want to create a new Analytics account for each associated AdWords account.

• • Note that once you have linked an Analytics and AdWords account the time zone in Google Analytics will automatically take that of the AdWords Account (if they are different).

Autotagging

• Why Autotagging

• • Autotagging allows Analytics to distinguish between organic traffic and advertising.

• • If Autotagging is not enabled, unpaid and paid clicks will look like they came from same source: Google/organic

• By default, Analytics considers them both to be from Google organic search results.

• So, enabling autotagging allows you to see which referrals to your site came from your paid Google campaigns and which ones came from Google organic search results.

Autotagging

• How Does Autotagging Work:

• • Autotagging automatically adds a unique id to your destination URLs when a visitor clicks on your ad

• • Autotagging works by adding a unique id, or g-c-l-i-d, to the end of your destination URLs.

• • 3rd party redirects and encoded URLs can prevent autotagging from working properly.

• • Test these cases by adding a unique parameter to the end of your URL --- for example you could add ?test=test.

• • Heres an example of a gclid appended to the end of a URL. www.mysite.com/?gclid=123xyz

Autotagging

• How to enable auto tagging:Google

• • Go to the My Account >> Account Preferences tab within your AdWords interface

• • Choose Tracking option. Make sure that this reads yes. If it says no, click the edit link, check the box for Destination URL Autotagging, and click Save Changes.

• View AdWords Data in Your Reports:

• • By Applying cost data to your Analytics account allows you to view your

• AdWords click, cost, and impression data in your Google Analytics reports.

Autotagging

• Importing Cost data From Adwords:

• • All AdWords cost data from an account will be imported into any profile in which the apply Cost Data checkbox is selected.

• • Make sure both AdWords and Analytics accounts are set to the same currency so that ROI data is accurately calculated.

• • If you don't want cost data imported into a particular profile, you can edit the profile settings.

• • Google Analytics is only able to import cost data from AdWords, and not from other ad networks.

Data Discrepancies

• There are several reasons for these differences.

• • AdWords tracks clicks, while Analytics tracks visits.

• • Some visitors who click on your AdWords ads may have JavaScript, cookies, or images turned off. Analytics won't track. AdWords will track as click.

• • Invalid Clicks.

• • AdWords data is uploaded once a day to Analytics so the results for each may be temporarily out of sync.

• • Missing Google analytics code.

• • If autotagging disabled, make sure that you manually tag your Destination URLs with campaign tracking variables.

• • Campaign data can be lost if your site uses redirects. As a result, Analytics wont show the visits as coming from AdWords, but your AdWords report will still report the clicks.

Manual Campaign URL Tagging:

• • GA automatically tracks referrals and search queries

• • To differentiate b/w natural and paid results, we have to add tags to the destination URLs

• • Keep in mind that even if you add your own tags, you wont see any Ad Group information from AdWords.

Manual URL Tagging

• You should always use the following variables:

• • Campaign Source - Identify an advertiser

• • utm_source .- Identify an advertiser

• • utm_medium - Advertising medium

• • utm_campaign - campaign name

• Optional variables:

• • utm_content - used to track different versions of an ad

• • utm_term - paid search keyword

• Example:

• http://www.mysite.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=email

URL Builder

• URL Builder:

• http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

• • To easily create your campaign URLs

• • If you have a large number of URLs to tag, you can use spreadsheets to automate the process.

• Best Practices:

• • If youve enabled autotagging, dont manually tag your AdWords destination URLs.

• • Create your links using URL builder

• • Use consistent names and spellings for all campaign values

• • Use only the campaign variables you need