What metrics should you track for a successful search advertising career?

Clicks and Impressions oh the basic of basic metrics. Impressions = the times your ad was seen and clicks are simply the traffic you drive to your destination of choice. Alone they mean very little, but add some performance formulas like click-through rate or CTR, and now we're getting somewhere this metric we can see which ads are resonating with our audience and can help us refine our ad copy and assets to resonate with our audience.

A higher CTR generally suggests better ad performance. Balancing CTR and CPC is crucial for profitability and a key for maximizing the efficiency of your advertising campaigns.

In my experience, the best way to leverage click-through rate and cost per click is to look at them through the lens of optimizing your ad creative. In Google Ads and other ad platforms, these are closely related because typically in an ad auction an ad with a higher expected click-through rate will perform better as it is seen as more relevant to the audience being targeted. This often can correlate to a lower cost per click, which continues down the metric rabbit hole down to return on ad spend.

CTR and CPC measures engagement and cost, while conversions and conversion rate delve into the actual impact on your business goals. A well rounded analysis of these metrics helps gauge the overall success and value of your advertising efforts. A higher number of conversions indicates that your ads are successfully driving user actions.

Conversions are a big one, but besides conversions you want to have an understanding on where those conversions lead and how many web conversions turn into sales. If you're an online retailer this is much easier, but if you're a company with a long sales cycle this can be a lot more difficult if you don't have conversions linked to your CRM.

A lower CPC indicates better cost management in achieving your goals. Balancing a reasonable CPC with a favorable ROAS is crucial for maximizing profitability. Regularly monitoring these metrics ensures a positive return on investment and sustainable profitability from your advertising efforts.

For a successful search advertising career, it's crucial to track a range of metrics that reflect both campaign performance and cost efficiency. Key metrics include Click-Through Rate (CTR), which indicates how compelling your ads are to your target audience; Conversion Rate, to measure the effectiveness of your ads in driving desired actions; Quality Score, which assesses the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages; Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Conversion, for financial efficiency; and Ad Rank, which determines your ad position in search results. Additionally, monitoring the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) gives a clear picture of the overall profitability of your campaigns.

The metrics you focus on will be based off your goals. Each situation will call for a focus on different metrics. Don't blindly follow one metric as the be all and end all. If your goal is brand awareness then focussing on impressions and impression share is great. But if you're focussed on profitability it's more likely to be CPC/RoAS.

Impressions are good, clicks are better, and conversions are even better than that, but conversion value is really where it's at! If you're using your metrics to make optimizations the top one to focus on is which conversions converted at a higher conversion value. Think of it this way. If you're selling shirts would you prefer to optimize for a single shirt purchase or would you prefer to optimize toward purchases of three shirts? If they are all the same price it's more profitable to optimize toward the audience that purchases 3 shirts at a time. The bidding strategy in Google Ads tROAS while optimizing towards conversion value will help you make the most of your budget.