Linking Google AdWords to Google Analytics

Some of the most powerful tools, available to digital marketing advertisers today is Google Analytics and Google AdWords. Not only do they provide valuable insight into customer habits, but they give organizations the ability to craft strategies that will have a maximum impact in both the short-term and long-term future. Once an organization has a solid foundation built on Google Analytics, the evolutionary step in this process is to link to Google AdWords to really leverage the digital resources at hand. Here are 4 reasons why Google Analytics needs to be linked to Google Adwords to maximize your organization’s digital presence.

1) Conversion Tracking

The most important reason to link the two is that AdWords and Analytics combined gives you a holistic picture of how many leads are being converted into real customers.
Through this, you are easily able to keep track of how leads are entering, what keywords are successful, and how searchers interact with your site. These insights will be incredibly valuable when crafting future digital strategies.

2) Customer Journey

AdWords and Analytics will be able to show you what the customer journey is. From first click of the keyword to when they exit the page, you will have data that directly shows what the customer journey is by keyword and what the pain points are of your website. The data it combines will show you many variables. When people are clicking through from an AdWords ad, are they leaving after a certain amount of time? How long are they spending on that site, and is there a specific set of pages where most new users exit from? Understanding customer behavior is integral to creating digital marketing campaigns that will resonate with users.

3) Provides incentives to update content

Linking Google AdWords and Google Analytics provides actionable insights on how users, especially new users, are interacting with your sites content. Observe the behavior, from first AdWords click to when they exit. Are most users leaving after seeing a specific page? How much time are they spending on the site? These are all important questions that are answered by linking the two. These answers to these questions may indicate issues with pages where users are having trouble. Or perhaps this information may be used as an incentive to go through current content on the website to make sure everything is fresh and relevant.

4) Ease of creating retargeting lists

Both AdWords and Analytics are also useful in understanding who to target, and what the key demographics are for digital marketing campaigns. Use analytics to feed into the specific retargeting lists that are being created in AdWords. Observe user behavior, such as customers who have returned to the website frequently or visit pages often and use these people as the base of the retargeting list.
Ultimately, both AdWords and Analytics are both essential tools in your digital marketing arsenal when trying to understand if your business goals are succeeding or not and where the gaps are. Linking the two will provide powerful information that will easily drive strategy and ensure that your resources are truly being maximized for success.

For extra how-to-steps, visit How to Link Google Analytics and Google AdWords