Custom goals allow you to set and track the performance of a metric of your choice. These custom goals can then be added as widgets to reports and custom dashboards.
This feature is only available on some of our plans. If you're unsure if you have access, check our pricing page or reach out to our support team.
Understanding the Goals page
At the top of the Goals page you'll see three widgets, tracking the current statuses of your active goals:
On Track - Shows how many custom goals are on track
Off Track - Shows how many custom goals are off track
Completed - Shows how many custom goals are complete
Below these sits the Goals table, with columns that help you understand and manage Goals at a glance:
Name - Shows the name of the custom goal (this name will appear when adding the custom goal widget onto the dashboard or reports)
Date Created - Shows the date that the custom goal was created
Last Updated - Shows the date that the custom goal was last updated
Description - Shows a description of the custom goal
Condition - Shows which rule triggers your custom goal
Progress - Shows a progress bar for your custom goal. You will see a green bar if the goal is on track, and a red bar if the goal is off track
Current Value - Shows the current value of the metric selected for the custom goal
Create a Custom Goal
From within a campaign's Goals section, select the "Create Goal" button in the top right-hand corner.
This will take you to a window where you can select whether you'd like to create a new goal, or clone an existing one. Select Create a New Goal to move to the next step.
From here, you'll be presented with a screen where you can create your custom goal.
In the Name field, we'll be calling our custom goal 'Google Adwords Spend'.
The Interval determines the time period in which the goal will measure against. This can be either 'Day' or 'Month':
Daily goals take your daily target and multiply it across the number of days in your date range.
Monthly goals are always locked to one full month, regardless of the date range, and they always show the full month, even if we're only part-way through that month.
Here we'll select 'Month'.
For Description, we'll be entering 'Goal to track Google Adwords Spend'.
In the Metric field, click the field to reveal a contextual menu of available integrations and metric options to choose from, or type out the relevant metric name.
For Condition, set which rule triggers your custom goal. The available options are:
Equals - The goal will be completed as soon as the goal value has been met
Less Than - The goal will be completed as soon as the selected value is less than the goal value
Less Than Or Equal To - The goal will be completed as soon as the actual value is less than or equal to the goal value
Greater Than - The goal will be completed as soon as the value has been exceeded
Greater Than Or Equal To - The goal will be completed as soon as the value has been met or exceeded.
Increase By - The goal will be completed as soon as the 'increase by' value has been achieved
Decrease By - The goal will be completed as soon as the 'decrease by' value has been achieved
Here we are choosing 'Greater Than Or Equal To'
For the Value setting, choose the goal threshold.
In this example we are using 300, which means that our goal is reached when Google Adwords Spend equals $300 or more.
You can also click 'Suggest Goal' which will find a recent value for that metric to suggest as a goal for you.
Our goal is now ready to be created. Click 'Save' once you are happy with the goal settings.
The custom goal will now be shown in the list on your campaign's goals page.
On your account level goals section, you will be able to see all goals created for all campaigns:
Note: Goal section data is refreshed every 12 hours.
Add custom goal widgets to reports and dashboards
After you've created a custom goal, it can be added as a widget to your custom dashboard or to your reports.
In the 'Add Widget' menu, choose Goal.
Next, drag the goal you would like into your report.
You'll now be able to see your custom goal widget.
Note: If you see "an error occurred" after saving your widget, please check that your custom goal is valid and that the integrations relating to your custom goal are connected properly.
Monthly goals and date ranges
Once you've added goal widgets to your dashboards and reports, they obviously need to comply with the date range that you're looking at.
Since goal widgets show your progress towards a monthly goal, their data does not follow exact date ranges like most other widgets. Instead, the data shown in goal widgets is focused on one whole month.
To keep things simple, we look at the last day of your date range when determining your goal widget's month.
For example:
If your date range is June 1st to June 30th, the goal will be based on June's data
If your date range is April 20th to May 15th, the goal will be based on May's data
If we didn't do this, we'd have to make arbitrary calls for how to divide your data and how to determine goal pacing (and sometimes pacing wouldn't apply at all), and things can get messy.
We'll be releasing more goal options in the future, to give customers more flexibility outside of monthly goals. If you have a specific use case or suggestion, please let our support team know!