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MenuHow can I accurately tell if the "Direct" traffic conversions I'm seeing in GA MCF is actually coming from my "Paid Search" (Adwords UTM) campaigns?
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Make sure you've setup advanced analytics. You'll get a better picture of which conversions were direct, and which ones were assisted by another channel. Use tags and make sure your urls include all the detailed parameters - note that savvy users might truncate that link, so use a link shortener (like bit.ly) to mask it.
Remember that direct doesn't mean "came to my site." It means "Google couldn't ascertain what campaign this was part of." For example, many links that come from Facebook mobile flow into direct, because the mobile app wipes the cookie. (this is part of what's known as "dark social.")
One way to get at this is to look at assisted conversions and multi channel funnel analysis in GA, which helps you start to understand how the channels interact.
Also, when adding UTM params to an Adwords campaign you can cause issues. Google can delete that stuff when it adds its own if you aren't careful.
Hi there - I'm a certified Google Partner and manage about $60k in spend a month.
I would first of all not use custom UTM tracking URLs for AdWords. Since Google AdWords and Analytics are tightly integrated, go with the default tracking and see what your data looks like.
If you are still not seeing the data you'd expect, next take a look at your conversion path. For instance, if you are running an ecommerce site, and you hop from www.mysite.com to store.mysite.com, there may be a break there. Another common issue is using a third-party gateway, i.e. www.mysite.com > PayPal > www.mysite.com/confirmation-page (which can be resolved using the admin feature: Referral Exclusion List).
Another thing to look at is Google Analytics > Landing Pages. You can pull up one of your AdWords-fueled landing pages, and a secondary dimension of Source/Medium to see if in fact you are correctly tracking AdWords to that page. If that traffic seems to disappear on your site, and otherwise possibly end up as Direct, then the disconnect is on your site, not in the UTM tracking parameters.
Regarding Direct traffic, you can generally expect that about half of it is unattributed organic search (depending on where your traffic normally comes from). The balance of is it direct traffic, bookmarks and some amount of unattributed (for whatever reason) traffic. I would not group Direct with your Paid Traffic spend in order to calculate ROAS.
Regarding your last question, if your traffic is coming directly from AdWords, then conversions should be attributed to AdWords. You can also take a look at your multi-channel attribution to see if AdWords contributed to any purchases with a different 'last-touch' attribution.
Bottom line is that you have to get your tracking tightened up, and not make assumptions about Direct traffic. Start by going with default UTM tracking on AdWords, and don't create custom UTM tracking URLs. See how your data looks from there (both at the landing page level and through conversions) and that should help identify where things are breaking down. From there you can move on to how you're tracking your other channels, be they paid or organic.
Hope this helps and good luck!
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In my experience, starting out testing one against the other is ideal (i.e. running campaigns on each and seeing which performs better). It's also important to look at what your immediate and long term goals are for the spend. Are you trying to sell them something now, keep them engaged for a later release of a product, or some other action? The key thing to note is that depending on what you're selling and what your keywords are, the bar can be a lot lower in terms of your bid per click if you go with Facebook Ads. Additionally: you can hyper target your audience with Facebook Ads like whoa (Google Ads are more limiting). Ex: I ran both sets of ads for a new line of ballet inspired barre-wear (targetting both ballet dancers and barre students). Both Facebook and Google Ads were linked to the sales page. For Google Ads: I used keywords like "barre-wear" (low search volume) "ballet attire" "activewear" (limited relevance) and about 20 other related terms. The spend to results ratio here was underwhelming. Keep in mind: I've only been working with Google Ads for a couple of years now. Better results are possible if you've got someone with 5+ years of experience who knows the system backwards and forwards, but for the most part, Google Ads are not DIY friendly if you want serious results. For Facebook Ads, I did 2 campaigns: 1. Ballet Dancers: I targetted women in major cities (NY, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles), who were under 26 and fans of ballet companies and schools in their city, and also those who were fans of major dance supply companies. 2. Barre Students: I targetted women nationwide who were between 26 and 52, married, above average household income, fans of barre studios in their area, fans of Lululemon Athletica (high end activewear brand), and did a couple of variations on different hobbies and activities to target specifically stay at home moms or wives who were active. The results: $100 in ad spend // over 150 clicks to the product page // 20 new email newsletter signups // 3 immediate sales // 2 follow up sales within that week (so for a $100 product the ad yielded about $500 in sales that week from individuals who could be potential customers again (and 20 new people to market to for future sales).MH
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Will using both Google Adwords Auto-Tagging AND Manual Tagging with UTM variables create any tracking problems in Google Analytics?
I've done a lot of complex analytics installations, usually cross-domain and including AdWords and manual tagging with conversion tracking of ecommerce transactions. The gclid by default will override the manual UTM values in Analytics so that is what you are looking for. If you are just grabbing the manual tags from the URL for your own purpose, this should be OK. However, if you at some point want to import conversions (say) connected to your manual tag, then you would want to enable UTM overriding the gclid: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033981?hl=en. Do you have AdWords and Analytics accounts linked? Where and how are you tracking commerce conversions, if you are? Do you feel you are getting the insights you need from your current custom reporting? Let me know if I can help with a call about those or further optimization of your analytics capture. Best - MichaelML
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It all depends on whether they are all selling the same thing to the same persona. If yes, then combine all the campaigns into one adwords account, which feeds into one analytics account. That way they can get feedback on the effectiveness of different keywords, ads, etc. more quickly (because there will be more data, from all the different websites, all in one place, for a particular keyword). If they are each selling different things, or to different personas, then don't combine their accounts, because it will just make things confusing and not useful from an analysis perspective.LV
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