From clicks to conversions: how to measure SEA success and when will you see results?

Before we can determine whether your SEA campaign is successful, we first need to determine what success means for your company. From our experience, we know that different companies pursue different goals.

For some of our clients, brand awareness is the main focus. They want to be highly visible when people search for products or services in their category. Through SEA, we can ensure that they are "always at the top" in Google. This means they are seen more often and the brand sticks better with potential customers.

Other customers are primarily focused on direct sales or leads. For a webshop, what ultimately counts is the number of sales generated through Google Ads, while a lead generation customer may place more value on the number of completed contact forms.

At Reward, we work with our clients to determine which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are relevant to them. Examples of commonly used KPIs include:

• Number of impressions (how often your ad is displayed)
• Number of clicks to your website
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): the percentage of people who click on your ad
• Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who take a desired action
• Cost Per Conversion (CPC): what you pay for each conversion
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): the return on your advertising expenditure

For example, for a clothing webshop, we often focus on ROAS, while for a B2B customer, we may focus more on the cost per lead form.

It is important to understand how to convert someone who clicks on your advertisement into someone who actually makes a purchase or fills out a contact form.

Within SEA, we consider different actions to be conversions, depending on the business objective. A conversion is essentially the desired result of an advertisement. This can vary from company to company, as mentioned earlier.

An often underestimated aspect of SEA is the landing page that visitors arrive at after clicking on your ad. We know that even the best keyword strategy and ad texts are ineffective if the landing page does not meet the visitor's expectations.

It is important that the content of your ad closely matches the keyword someone searched for. This also applies to the landing page someone ends up on.

We regularly see visitors "bounce within seconds" if the landing page does not meet their expectations. Good alignment between keywords, ad texts, and landing pages is therefore certainly important for a high conversion rate.

But how quickly can you expect results with SEA?

That answer depends on various factors, but we can provide some general guidelines.

When we set up a new Google Ads campaign, it first goes through a learning phase. When we are just starting to set up a campaign, we have a so-called learning phase that Google has to go through. For about one to two weeks, Google actually investigates who the target audience is.

During this learning phase, Google tests different target groups and collects data to understand which users are most valuable for your specific campaign. The results in this phase are therefore often not yet representative of what you can expect in the longer term.

Realistic timeline for different outcomes

Based on our experience with many different campaigns, we can outline the following timeline:

Weeks 1-2: The learning phase in which Google collects data. You will already see clicks and possibly some conversions, but this is not yet representative.

Weeks 3-4: The initial optimizations are beginning to have an effect. Google has now collected sufficient data to target potential customers more effectively.

Month 2: The campaign is starting to perform really well. You should now start to see a stable pattern of conversions if your strategy and targeting are set up correctly.

From month 3 onwards: Further refinement and optimization lead to increasingly better results and an improved ROI.

The speed at which you see results is also strongly influenced by your product or service. For example, if it concerns a clothing store, people are more likely to make a purchase than if someone is offering solar panels.

Products with a short decision cycle (such as clothing) therefore tend to generate conversions faster than products or services that require customers to go through a longer decision-making process (such as solar panels or business services).

Competition in your market also plays a role. With less competition, you can often achieve good positions more quickly at lower CPCs, leading to a faster ROI.

Measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns is essential to know whether your investment is paying off. The most important metrics we monitor at Reward are Return on Ad Spend, conversion rate, and A/B testing.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS is the most important indicator for many of our customers. This metric tells you how much money you earn back for every dollar you spend on advertising. The ideal ROAS varies depending on the sector and business model, but is always linked to your profit margins.

We always look at things together with the customer, depending on their product or service. How much do you want to invest? And what do you gain when you make a sale or bring in a lead? How much should such a lead or sale cost?

For a product with a profit margin of 50% and a willingness to invest 10% of the profit in marketing, a conversion should cost no more than 5% of the sales price. With a sales price of €100, this means a maximum cost per conversion of €5.

Measuring and benchmarking conversion rates

The conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who convert) is another important metric. A good conversion rate depends heavily on your industry, product, and landing page, but in general:

• E-commerce: 1-3% is often a good guideline
• Lead generation: 3-5% for contact forms is common
• B2B services: 0.5-1.5% for more complex services with higher value

It is important to view these figures in context. Generating more traffic does not always mean that the quality is good. As an SEA specialist, you focus on ensuring that the traffic is relevant.

Google Ads can be highly effective for virtually any type of business, but success does not always come overnight. It requires a combination of the right strategy, patience during the learning phase, and continuous optimization.

As we see in our daily practice at Reward, it is important to have realistic expectations about when you can expect results and how to measure them correctly. With the right approach and KPIs, you will usually see significant results within a month, which will only improve in the following months as the campaigns are further optimized.