You’ve probably heard of the terms Click Through Rate, Cost Per Click, Impressions, etc.

Whether you tried to dabble on online ads yourself or hired someone to do it in the past, you probably saw these and a bunch more numbers that were at the very least confusing for you.

All this data lives inside Google Ads (Facebook does this too) to provide marketers with a clear view on how the ad is performing. 

Thing is, Google doesn’t know what you are performing for – your goal.

It doesn’t know whether you want to get more clicks on the website, or whether you just want your logo in front of as many people as possible, or whether you are looking to convert clients. 

Since it doesn’t know what you want, Google gives us marketers as much data as possible to decipher the information. 

The more you understand the data, the better you understand the performance of the ad and can make informed decisions as to how to best spend your budget or your time. 

Makes sense right? Google is trying to help us out. 

The problem, or the question you should be asking yourself, is what is the one thing you want out of your ads for you to consider the investment a success? 

Most people say clients/customers. You want more than what you currently bring in. 

So let me tell you, how are the metrics and numbers I mentioned right now help you land clients?

Chances are you have no idea. Because the numbers you are seeing are not meant for you, they’re meant for the marketer that’s supposed to optimize and help get you that return on your investment. 

You probably have no idea what is considered a positive or a good number on each of those metrics, you’re relying on someone else to tell you whether it’s doing well or not. If you hired someone to do this for you, you’re also relying on them to achieve the results you want.

So they’re bombarding you with data you don’t understand with statistics you know nothing about, and this narrows your field of view because you are only looking at what they’re telling you to look.

So let me ask you again, what is the one thing you want out of your ads for you to consider the investment a success? Clients? Cool. How many? 

10? 100? Excellent.

That’s all we should be concerned about. 

If you want 100 more clients this year and you want them all to come through advertising, then your reports should be simply about how many clients you got that can be tied to ads. 

If you’re not hitting your target numbers, then it’s the agency or marketer’s job to find out why and provide methods to fix it. After all that’s what you are paying them for. 

Track your goals, track your ROI, track your customers. Track results that matter. Everything else is a distraction and is potentially wasting your ad budget.

If you aren’t tracking results or your current advertising agency isn’t providing you with results directly related to your goal, chances are they are you are wasting a huge amount of your money.

Most likely because they are doing what most inexperienced marketers and agencies do when they try to do ads and don’t understand how. I call it the “spray and pray”.

This is very common and I see it all the time. If you are running ads right now, this is probably happening to you too.