What the Ad Tracking Feature Can Tell You About Your Ads & Your Clients
Say you put $200 behind an Instagram post for your salon. A week later, you’ve got 47 clicks and a handful of likes, but no idea whether a single one of those people actually booked an appointment.
That’s usually the case with most small business owners and their ads. Instagram, Facebook, and Google can tell you what happened on the ad, like who saw it and who clicked.
What they can’t tell you is whether any of those people went on to schedule anything, because that part happens over on your booking page — which is a completely separate system that your ad account knows nothing about.
Bookedin’s Ad Tracking feature links the two together. When someone books through your online booking page, this feature reports it back to Google Analytics, Meta, or both.
That way, you can see which of your ads are bringing in real bookings, and then you can start making real decisions about your ad budget instead of going on gut feel.
In this article, we’ll go over what Ad Tracking does, the questions it can answer about your ad spend, and what you’ll need to sort out before switching it on.
What Exactly Does Ad Tracking Do?
Ad Tracking connects your Bookedin page to your Google and Meta ad accounts, so every client booking done online gets reported back as a result of your ad.
In practice, that means when a client schedules a session through your booking page, Ad Tracking sends a signal to Google Analytics or Meta saying (in plain terms) a booking just happened here.
If that person found your booking page by clicking one of your ads, Google or Meta can now tie the booking back to that specific ad. So instead of showing you that the ad got a click, your report shows you that the ad got you a booking.
You can set this feature up with Google, with Meta, or with both running at once — there’s no need to choose.
Note: Ad Tracking is available exclusively on Bookedin’s Pro plan. If you’re on Free or Plus, you’ll need to upgrade to turn it on.
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6 Questions Ad Tracking Can Answer About Your Ads
Once bookings start showing up in your ad reports, you’ll have real numbers to work with instead of guesses. Here’s what to look for, and what the answers can tell you.
1. Which of my ads actually got someone on the calendar?
Most business owners run more than one ad at a time: a couple of boosted posts, maybe a search ad. However, there’s usually no way to tell these ads apart once the money’s out the door.
With Ad Tracking on, every booking gets attached to the ad that brought it in, so you can put your ads side by side and see which ones did the work (i.e., brought in the most clients).
Take a tattoo artist running two ads: one for flash days, one for custom consultations.
The custom consultation ad got more comments and saves, so at first glance it looks like the winner. But once they can see where their recent appointments came from, it’s clear the flash ad is the one filling her calendar.
2. How much am I paying for each booking my ads bring in?
This is simple arithmetic once you have the numbers. Take what you spent on an ad and divide it by the bookings it brought in.
Say a barbershop puts $250 into ads over a month and gets 10 bookings out of it. That’s $25 per booking, against a haircut that runs $40 plus tip, from a client who might come back every six weeks after that.
Now, the owner can actually judge whether that’s a good trade. It also gives them a number to measure against: Next month’s ad either beats $25 a booking or it doesn’t.
3. Which is working better for my business: Google or Meta ads?
Most owners have a hunch about which platform pulls its weight; however, sometimes the hunch is wrong. Running both with Ad Tracking turned on settles it.
A pet groomer might find that her Google search ads bring people who book the same day, because they were already searching “dog grooming near me” and just needed to pick someone. Meanwhile, Instagram might be bringing in people who look around and don’t book.
One thing to keep in mind: Google and Meta don’t always count a booking the same way, so the numbers won’t line up exactly. Use them to spot which platform is doing better overall, not to compare them booking for booking
4. Should I keep running this ad or shut it off?
This is the decision most owners put off, so the ad quietly keeps running and quietly keeps costing money.
Ad tracking gives you something real to decide on. However, it’s best to give an ad a fair shot first, meaning a few weeks and enough clicks to see a pattern, not just four days.
An ad that’s not really working looks like this: People are landing on your page but are leaving without booking anything.
That usually points to one of two problems — your ad is attracting the wrong people, or something on your booking page is losing them once they arrive.
5. Which of my services are my ads actually selling?
Every booking you get is tied to a specific service, so you can see exactly what people are booking after clicking your ad, not just what you advertised
A massage therapist might run ads for 90-minute deep tissue sessions and find that most of the appointments coming in are for 60-minute standard massages.
There are two ways to read that: Maybe the ad is drawing people who want the cheaper option, or maybe the 60-minute session is what people actually want and the ad should say so. Either way, it’s something you can put to work in the next round of ad copy.
6. Am I getting new clients from my ads, or just clients I already had?
Yes, some of your regulars see your ads, too. If a chunk of your ad-driven bookings are people who were already coming to you, you’re essentially paying for ads that attract clients you already had to begin with.
You can check this by looking at the names of everyone who booked while your ad was running, then see which of them are new to you and which ones you already know.
Fortunately, Bookedin keeps your client history, so you can easily pull up each name and see if they’ve booked with you before.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll know whether your ads really brought in 10 new people, or just reminded four regulars to book a little sooner.
A Few Things To Know Before Using This Feature
Setting up Ad Tracking is a one-time thing. You do it once in your Bookedin settings, and after that it just runs in the background.
Our step-by-step guides walk through the setup for Google and for Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
But before you dive in, here are some things to keep in mind:
- Google tracks only appointments. Meta tracks appointments, classes, and workshops. This is worth knowing if your business runs classes or workshops alongside appointments.
- Only bookings made online get counted. Ad Tracking follows what happens on your Bookedin page, so that means walk-ins, phone bookings, and appointments you added yourself won’t show up in the numbers.
- The numbers won’t be perfectly exact. Most bookings from your ads will get counted correctly. But every now and then one might slip through, like if someone clicks your ad on their phone but books later from a laptop, or their privacy settings block the tracking.
- Give it a couple of days before you judge the results. Conversions can take 24 to 48 hours to show up in Google Ads and Meta, so don’t panic if a booking doesn’t appear right away. Once the numbers do start coming in, give them some time to add up so you get a clearer picture.
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About the Author
The Bookedin Team is made up of writers, marketers, and people who genuinely understand the day-to-day of running a service business. Our articles cover everything from scheduling and client management to marketing and business growth — because running a service business is no small feat.
