A Greensboro law firm partner showed us a Google AdWords account spending $6,800 a month with no conversion tracking installed. He thought the campaigns were "doing alright" because the phone seemed busy. After 30 days of proper tracking, two of his five campaigns were producing every qualified lead. The other three were burning roughly $3,100 a month on clicks that never called.
The Three Things You Have to Measure
- →Form submissions: Install the AdWords conversion pixel on the thank-you page after every contact form. This is non-negotiable.
- →Phone calls from ads: Use a call tracking number that swaps in only when visitors arrive from AdWords. Services like CallRail or Mongoose Metrics integrate cleanly.
- →Closed revenue: Every lead that becomes a customer needs to be tagged back to the campaign that delivered it.
The Math That Makes Decisions Easy
Take your monthly AdWords spend per campaign. Divide it by the number of qualified leads that campaign produced. That is your cost per lead. Then divide cost per lead by your close rate to get cost per customer. A Winston-Salem HVAC company spending $1,200 a month on a campaign that delivers 20 leads at a 30 percent close rate has a $200 cost per customer. If average customer value is $1,400, the campaign is keeping the lights on. If it is $180, kill it.
The Reports to Run Every Monday
- →Search terms report: Shows the actual queries triggering your ads. You will find waste here every week.
- →Geographic report: Confirm spend is concentrated in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point and not bleeding into markets you cannot serve.
- →Day and hour report: Most service businesses get the best leads during business hours. Pause spend during the windows that produce only window shoppers.
Match types matter just as much as tracking. Read our companion guide on choosing the right AdWords keyword match types, or have our digital marketing agency set up the entire measurement layer for your account.