Are Google Ads Worth It?

Google Ads and Bing Ads are getting more expensive. Your PPC ad costs may have doubled in the last couple of months. This is leading businesses to ask, are Google Ads worth it? Do Google and Bing Ads deliver a  return on revenue?

Plenty of PPC management tools claim to help agencies measure PPC ad success, but these tools measure the wrong metrics.

The wrong metrics:

• Conversions
• Clicks
• Impressions

These metrics don't tell you what you want to know, which is. "how much revenue am I getting in return for my ad spend? Marketers need to be able to tie ad spend to sales revenue, and that means knowing three things:

• How many of your conversions are actual leads?
• Are those leads quotable?
• What are those quotable leads worth?

WhatConverts tracks these metrics so marketers can optimize PPC ads to get quotable leads. Focusing on leads helps determine the right amount of ad spend and decide which keywords are worth bidding on.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts track the success of your marketing.

In this article, you'll find a detailed breakdown of how WhatConverts shows you if your PPC ad spend delivers a return on investment.

Are Google Ads worth it? How to track ROI

Google Ads are getting more expensive. Data from Postclick shows that 60% of marketers expect their PPC budget to increase in the coming year. With that in mind, you need tracking tools that can help you determine whether or not the spend is delivering results.

Ads are getting so expensive that you might see your ad spend doubled from one month to the next. This happened to one WhatConverts customer, and the business had to figure out if doubling PPC ad spend would deliver enough leads to make it worthwhile.

How to increase your PPC budget with Confidence

One WhatConverts customer, Airskirts, increased Google Ad spend every month for four months, going from $5,000 per month in Ads spend to $35,000 per month. Airskirts used WhatConverts to confirm that the Google Ads were delivering quotable leads throughout the entire time, giving Airskirts the confidence to continue to increase ad spend.

Let's look at what that process looks like. What happens when your CPC ad spend starts to go up, and you have to figure out if it's worth it?

How to Make Marketing Decisions When Your PPC Ad Spend Increases

Both Google and Bing provide PPC services, so learnings from one can help inform strategies for the other.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts track the success of your marketing.

The charts below show a case in which one WhatConverts customer went from spending a little over $500 on PPC Ads in December to suddenly spending $746 in January.

(January CPC Ads Spend) 

The Bing Ads dashboard shows that this customer got 40 conversions in December but only 35 conversions in January.

(December CPC Ad Spend)

So, are 35 conversions worth $746 in ad spend? To answer that question, you have to be able to answer a few other questions:

• How many of these 35 conversions are actual leads?
• What are these 35 conversions worth in potential sales revenue?

Neither Google nor Bing provides the answers to these questions. PPC ads dashboards provide anonymous conversion numbers, but you can't see the people behind the conversions, what they're interested in buying, or whether they're quotable leads.

WhatConverts, however, shows the leads behind the conversions. In this case, we can click on the 35 conversions pull up the lead details.

PPC Budget Tip #1: Look at the Leads Behind the Conversions

The lead details page shows form submissions, so we can see how many of these conversions requested quotes. We can also see phone call transcripts to determine which conversions asked for pricing over the phone. This data allows us to mark leads as quotable or not quotable. WhatConverts also provides a lead value field where you can add quote sales value.

To determine if the $746 in ad spend is worth it, we must look at the individual leads. We can go through and qualify leads (marketing yes/no) and potentially add quote value when possible.

PPC Budget Tip #2:  Determine the Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Let's think about what each lead has to be worth to make this ad spend worthwhile.

This customer spent $746 on ads and got 35 conversions.

They're spending $21 per conversion.

The conversion numbers won't tell us how much they're spending per lead (cost-per-lead or CPL). The CPL is the more critical number because leads are easier to quantify than conversions. It's hard to tell what an anonymous conversion is worth in sales value. With WhatConverts, it's easy to determine what a lead is worth in sales value.

This campaign is working if the WhatConverts lead data confirms that the 35 conversions are qualified leads. As you can see, WhatConverts was able to tell us, within 10-minutes, that the leads are qualified; they aren't spam or solicitors. If WhatConverts confirms that the leads are qualified, the marketing team may want to spend more on PPC ads since they're driving qualified leads for just $21 per lead.

PPC Budget Tip #3: Use Reporting to Show the Value of Ad Spend

WhatConverts can quickly show the value of your marketing campaign, then produce a report showing the cost per lead, the effectiveness of the campaign, and the recommendations for future marketing campaigns. You can also show the client the value of marketing the leads as quotable — the value of WhatConverts.

In this way, WhatConverts helps you retain clients who want to see the value of every lead and attract new clients by proving that you can track lead value.

When clients ask, "Are Google Ads worth it?"

Imagine, for a second, that you're meeting with a potential client.

The client has a question: "So if I do use your agency to run my Google Ads, how will I know that any of the leads are going to be any good?"

Agencies would usually be stumped by that question, only able to tell the client, "well, you can't guarantee the quality of all leads." With WhatConverts, you have an easy answer.

With WhatConverts, your agency has an answer: "We can track which Google Ads keywords are generating non-quotable leads or low-quality leads. That means that after a few months, we can stop bidding on those keywords. We can then shift that marketing spend to the keywords generating quotable leads. Over time, we'll only be left with keywords and campaigns that drive quotable leads.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts track the success of your marketing.