Introduction:
Ironically, Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a fickle beast to tame and is not an overnight job. It is better if marketers are prepared to invest both time and effort in campaigns. An essential aspect of this effort is getting familiar with the PPC life cycle and getting used to the habit of conducting a regular PPC performance report eventually.
The pay-per-click (PPC) advertising world is challenging and complex. With all consideration, it’s rarely dull. One inevitable thing is marketers need a rock-solid PPC campaign strategy to generate real-time results. The PPC life cycle is the sequential path that a particular campaign will go through as more and more people interact with ads. For instance, a specific campaign focused on lead generation will have the following stages:
- Impression Stage
- Click Stage
- Engagement Stage
- Conversion Stage
- Spend Stage
- ROAS Stage
Well experienced digital managers will use PPC reports to monitor the six stages of the PPC life cycle, which will ultimately help figure out whether a particular campaign is a success or failure.
Ways to Optimize PPC Performance:
· Build A Strong Account Structure
· Focus on High-Performance PPC Keywords
· Further, Build Out Negative Keyword Lists
· Pause Keywords with Poor Performance
· Optimize Ads & Create New Ad Text
The two most crucial steps to follow that will guide you through creating a PPC report are: decide on your objectives and find your key metrics.
Standard metrics of a PPC analysis report are:
- Keyword performance
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Ad performance
- Cost
- Conversions
- Cost per conversion
When running different campaigns, measure performance with the help of these following metrics:
- Overall campaign metrics
- Lessons learned for future campaigns
- Cost per campaign
- Device performance
- Channel performance
- Best performing ads and keywords
Metrics to add while creating a report that goes beyond a month:
- What worked (and what didn’t work)
- Month-over-month data
- Benchmarking to compare the success
List of things stakeholders will enquire about:
- Overall PPC performance
- How the work has contributed to creating awareness
- Number of conversions generated
- Cost for each conversion
- What worked and what didn’t
- The following steps towards meeting more objectives
Efforts to measure PPC account success and take Google Ads reporting to the next level!
1– The Impression Stage
Once a campaign is launched the primary concern is getting impressions. Interestingly, Google uses a complex algorithm to determine when the ads are displayed. This is based on few factors, and they are:
- Max CPC of keyword
- Quality Score of a keyword
- Ad extensions
- Quality of the Ad
- Quality of the landing page
2– The Click Stage
This stage is about measuring the number of clicks a particular ad receives. General thumb rule is more clicks means an ad is performing well. Try to look for the CTR rate, and ideally, it is suggested that the value should be minimal.
3– The Engagement Stage
Once someone clicks an ad, arrival on the website is normal. Well, this is known as a smart move to link Google Analytics and Google Ads. Here one needs to measure the activity to gauge the ultimate audience engagement. Some important considerations at this stage:
- Bounce Rate – A higher rate is a bad sign.
- session duration
- Time on Page
- Pageviews
- Loading Speed
- Targeting
4– The Conversion Stage
Here comes the critical point of a PPC campaign performance report; this stage tells whether a particular campaign is meeting the goals or not.
5–The Spend Stage
As known to all conversions are king, but one still need to assess the cost. Thus consider the following and try to optimize the budget by reducing wasted spending and if the conversion is a high proportion, you know things are on track.
6– The ROAS Stage
A PPC life cycle concludes with the sixth stage. This final stage gives an idea you how much a business earned for every dollar that was spent. A marketer can always maximize this ratio by working hard to improve the previous five stages.
Listing various types of PPC reports:
- Account Audit Report
- Wasted Spend Report
-
Budget Utilization Report
-
Device Performance Report
-
GEO Performance Report
-
Campaign Targeting Report
-
Cost Analysis Report
-
Essential Summary Report
-
Top Movers Report
-
Most Significant Keyword Report
Conclusion:
Always remember, a good PPC report depicts a story in a way that everyone can easily understand. This will make the job easier and more visible. Creating templates for PPC reports can make the work more efficient by making stakeholders happier. The existence of a perfect template is a myth, but one can always build a spreadsheet that works best careering all the needs. Post creation of the draft of a template, one can revisit it anytime This acts as a time-saver template that can eventually lead to different variations. Whether an analysis of a particular campaign or monthly report, it is still beneficial to create a customized template that helps maintain the consistency of information. The most important thing is to align business goals with PPC performance to ensure that the presented data serves the purpose and value to everyone in the company.
