Are My Google Ads Really Working?

Are my Google Ads really working? Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. It's really easy to get lost in a sea of data and strategies in this whole digital marketing world we play in. Your pay-per-click manager might send you a report every month that's just chock full of things like CPCs and CTRs and keyword stats and all these other metrics that are just merely indecipherable. They tell you that performance is improving month over month or year over year or over whatever timeframe, and you're getting some phone calls and things are ticking along. But you're also spending, let's say, $3,500 a month on Google Ads. It's not nothing in your budget. Add that to things like landing page products and the actual fee to manage those ads, and things aren't really starting to stack up in the marketing department. But even with these costs piling up, it's really scary to pull the plug on marketing. Since you're already in the dark on what your ads are really doing for you, pulling the plug feels like jumping off a cliff into a lake in the middle of the night. You're pretty sure it's going to be okay, and you've seen what's there during the daytime, but right now, in this moment, with the adrenaline pumping, it's scary. This isn't where we want to be. When it comes to marketing, there are things that should make your adrenaline start pumping, but it's not whether or not those things are working. That feeling should be reserved for things like launching new campaigns and trying a risky idea. We don't want that feeling in the pit of our stomach about whether or not something we've been paying for for months is actually working. So what do we do about this? How do we actually dig in and find out if our Google Ads are working? Well, it's simple, but it's not necessarily easy. You already know about Google Analytics and conversion tracking in Google Ads, and maybe you've even played with some call tracking or CRM software that can aggregate your data and give you some info. Yeah, we're going to talk about those options, but stick with me to the end of this episode because we're also going to talk about a platform that I absolutely love. And this platform, I think, is the be all and end all when it comes to marketing tracking. See, Google Analytics is great. It provides tons of granular data on user behavior, on where your traffic is coming from, and it's really powerful even now that they've become GA4 and done all this weird stuff. And Google Analytics also integrates directly with Google Ads. So you can create conversions or goals for users in Google Analytics and then directly import them over to Google Ads. This is a huge time saver for people like me who manage lots of campaigns on Google Ads. If a firm has all of their conversions already set up in Google Analytics, it's a really great day for me. Beyond that though, by syncing your Google Ads and your Google Analytics accounts, you gain access to what really is a treasure trove of metrics. Beyond the basic clicks and impressions and all the metrics we focus on inside Google Ads, you can now explore more metrics like like bounce rate, session duration, and conversion paths. These metrics can start to reveal the effectiveness of your website and your landing pages into actually converting visitors into leads. And these insights are really powerful for us. We start to learn where potential clients are dropping off, which pages are engaging them the most, and the journey that they're taking before they actually reach out to us. I may talk a bit of trash about Google Analytics from time to time, but it is a powerhouse, and it really is an essential part of your website these days. But I also mentioned conversion tracking. And you might think, well, Toby, can't I just use conversion tracking inside Google Ads to measure things? And sure, Google Ads conversion tracking is also really powerful. It's detailed. It provides us with some incredibly cool attribution models so we can more accurately decide on which keywords to push on and which ones to hold back on. But we don't get everything here. We miss little details on who the users actually are, and we miss out if their conversion takes place outside of something we have already set up to track. And that's really one of the biggest drawbacks of Google's tracking systems across the board, and a lot of tracking systems. They just require so much setup. Whether it's these conversions in Google Ads, or really just doing the conversion from Universal Analytics to GA4, it feels like you need a computer science degree just to even get started. And when you do get set up, it's sometimes difficult to tell if things are actually working. And that brings me to the system that is really just a total game changer for law firms, but it's really fantastic for any business doing B to C sales online and probably for businesses doing B to B. And that's WhatConverts. I think I've mentioned this before on Legal Marketing 101, but it deserves talking about again. WhatConverts is an all-in-one conversion tracking and lead attribution platform that's caters really specifically to the needs of local businesses. It's not just another marketing tool. It is really a game changer. Are your Google ads really working? What converts is how you find out. But what really sets what converts apart? At the heart of what converts lies its powerful lead tracking capabilities, from phone calls to form submissions, live chats to e-commerce transactions. What converts captures every lead that interacts with your website, your digital marketing campaigns, or your phone, and then automatically attaches the data you need to that lead. It essentially sits on top of your existing systems and helps us put all the dots together automatically. You can plug in your existing Google Analytics account or you can use what converts own tracking pixel. They'll automatically detect the forms and the phone numbers and other actions on your website and then they'll track the interactions with those elements. We can also track and record calls with Whatconverts. Of course, programs like CallRail and Call Tracking Metrics, and there's probably hundreds of other competitors now, they do something very similar. And sometimes they give us slightly more detailed information where they have a specific recording feature we like, and I just kind of find them a little bit fiddly and frustrating to set up. They do integrate with Whatconverts though. But with just Whatconverts, we also get the same options for buying these new tracking numbers and dealing with all the call tracking pools and different things you can do there. You can even get call recording and all of that data. But you don't have to do so much of the connecting the dots on the backend to make all the tracking actually relevant. What converts does 99% of the heavy lifting for us, detecting and then sorting every single one of our leads. Achieving this level of granularity with other types of tracking, at least in my experience, has always taken 10 times as long or cost 10 times as much. And when we're spending thousands and thousands of dollars a month on our ads, it's really tough for me to argue that getting more detailed with our data is a bad thing. The automatic attribution that WhatConverts provides is without a doubt my favorite feature the platform offers. I never have to wonder where did this person really come from or dig through stacks of client interactions and forms and stuff like that, an active campaign or Clio, what converts just tells me right away. This client came from your Google Ads. Now I've included an affiliate link to what converts in the show notes, which I will get a commission on if you buy something there, but there's no pressure to do so. I do really encourage you to go and check out what converts. It might not be right for you today, but it's so simple and it's so powerful. I really don't know how you can afford to not check it out. I don't have anything in particular to do with what converts other than the affiliate link but I personally use this product, I've set up this product for firms and it is really, really top notch for the price. For small law firms and solos, all of this tracking stuff can seem really daunting. There's a lot of data, there's a lot of pieces to connect and a lot of it's technical. Or maybe your campaigns aren't really big enough for you to care about the tracking. Or maybe you have a really killer tracking system from your agency. If it's the latter, I'm sorry you spent some time with me today, but I hope you did learn something. But in my opinion, if you're spending any money at all on marketing, you can't afford to not know which of your dollars are turning into clients. Even if you're just spending $100 a month, why would you spend that money if it doesn't produce results? We're in the age of information, and data is probably, well, definitely the most powerful weapon we can wield in marketing. If you're spending money on marketing and it's not working, or you don't even know if it's working, it's time to fix that. We've all experienced data overload, and this can feel like an extension of that. But it's really important. You need to figure this one out. If you need some help, shoot me an email. That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out rosenadvertising.com for more. Thanks.[MUSIC]