Businesses and brands can utilize the internet to boost their messages to audiences in any number of ways. One of the greatest developments ever for businesses, the internet provides outlets through email, search engines, social media and more. The potential reach of these outlets – combined with their relative low cost – makes them an appealing component of any marketing strategy.

Google is perhaps the most popular method for deploying simple PPC campaigns to large audiences, but not everybody knows how to use it properly. To give you some guidance on how to get the most out of each campaign, let’s look at a few metrics you should always be following.

Cost Per Conversion

Ultimately, the true measurement of success for every PPC campaign isn’t inherently how much was spent on the total campaign, but how much was spent on each completed, desired action. In the Ad Spend section of Google Ads, you’ll find a cost per conversion statistic. This can help you discover how much you’re spend on each desirable action, and can guide you toward better campaign decisions.

If you discover that pinging URLs with a certain type of copy is only producing half the ROI of another campaign, then you’ll obviously know to tweak that campaign for better results – even if it’s delivering more conversions in a nominal sense.

Impressions Lost to Budget

Learning how to properly optimize your budgets with Google Ads is crucial to maximizing influence. Thankfully, Google provides access to a stat that can help you determine that: the search lost metric. It’ll show up under “search lost IS (budget)”, and displays as a percentage.

Fundamentally, the higher the percentage, the more investment you can make in this segment to increase conversions. Ideally, this figure will be at 0, but anything greater than that suggests that you can scale the campaign to produce better results: after all, you don’t want to cede this ground to the competition.

Conversion Rates

While the cost per conversion is a critical metric that should always be considered, the number of conversions you’re generating – and the rate at which they’re being generated -is important, too.

Here, you’ll be able to tell how effective each of your segments is in relation to one another, as well as how effective they are compared to industry averages. You can then determine exactly how well – or poorly – a campaign is performing. This information is the basis for determining whether any changes need to be made in budgets, targeting and so forth.

Additionally, you want to inspect how many conversions you’re generating from each segment. This information by itself may not be indicative – after all, you could be running different campaigns with different budgets – but the information is nonetheless valuable in determining exactly how much of your newfound growth is coming from each element.

When used properly, Google Ads can be an effective platform for businesses of all sizes. Thankfully, Google provides users with a variety of metrics and data-points to consider when running and formulating their campaigns. These three elements should always be at the top of your inspection list when considering the effective of any marketing efforts.