How To Use Events As Conversion Goals In Google Ads

In this article we wanted to show you how to use events as conversion goals in Google Ads, using data you have pulled through from Google Analytics.

In order to bring conversion events from Google Analytics into Google Ads, you are going to have to convert any events you want to track into ‘Goals’ first within Google Analytics and so this blog tells you how.

Once you have the following set up, then you will need to go ahead and pull these goals into Google Ads, so read this ‘how to’ guide here, for what you need to do next.

How to make events into goals in Google Analytics

The biggest battle is getting the events set up in the first place, which, in the case of click events (for recording clicks on buttons, or downloads of PDFs), you will usually need the help of a web designer to achieve.  But assuming you have the events in place, here’s how to turn those events into goals.

• You first need to go to Google Analytics then click the ‘Conversions’ sub heading on the left hand column, the select ‘Goals’.
• If you have never set up goals before you need then to click ‘Set up goals’.
• Alternatively, you can click on ‘Admin’ at the very bottom on the left hand side and then ‘goals’ in the right most column (second option down under ‘View Settings’).
• Click ‘New Goal’ then select ‘Template’ and add a goal name. Something like ‘clicks on email addresses’ would be perfect for describing this kind of event, for instance.
• Select ‘event’ from the bullet point options and then next.
• It pays to have your events open in a separate tab to help you fill in the next bit. Match the Category, Action and Label exactly to what you have in your events tab in Google Analytics.
• Finally click ‘verify this goal’ and it will show you how often people have performed that goal recently – which also tells you the code is working.
• Click save and repeat for all your events you would like to pull into Google Ads.
• You can now go to Google Ads and import the conversions from Google Analytics.

Other types of goals in Google Analytics

As can be seen in the above screengrab there are also other types of goals you can set up in Google Analytics, the labels of which are pretty straightforward to understand. If you choose to measure session durations or number of pages viewed, then go right ahead and follow the simple on-screen instructions to set these up.

Smart goals is a ‘machine learning’ way of Google identifying engaged users on your website. Google is moving towards the dumbing down of analytics to create ‘Smart this’ and ‘Smart that’, but to be honest, they rarely suit the purposes of most businesses. However, if you want to go ahead and set up Smart Goals, then go right ahead!

The only other one from the screen grab not mentioned is the ‘destination’ goal. With this goal, it can be handy to set up a goal on a thank you page that gets served to a visitor who fills out a contact form, or on an ecommerce thank you page. Sometimes we work with clients who have absolutely no access to web developers to set up any other form of tracking on ‘goals’ like this, and so this kind of goal can serve as a rudimentary way of tracking desirable actions on your website if all other avenues are closed down.

What happens next?

After you have completed the set up of goals in Google Analytics you can go ahead and import them into your Google Ads account to help train the account – see this how to guide for more info.

If you aren’t running Google Ads, then these goals can serve the purpose of allowing you to report back on website visitor behaviours and is a useful reporting mechanism in its own right.

Read more

We hope that this series of articles will save you hours of searching for how to deal with small tasks. Take a look at the other articles we’ve put together:

• How do you link your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts together?
• How do you link your Google Analytics account to Google Ads?
• How do you import goals from Google Analytics to train your Google Ads account?
• How do you change the default currency in Google Analytics to GBP?

As we work our way through small and always difficult to remember tasks at the coalface of marketing, we’re sure there will be additions to this list very soon, so maybe bookmark this page if you found it helpful.

Contact us

We’re Google Partners, so if you’d like help with Google Analytics, Google Ads, marketing data analysis or digital marketing strategy, please email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199.