The great thing about Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) is that there is so much data, meaning there is so much insight and so much potential. However, this also means it can be tricky for organisations to determine which metrics are most important to them. Is it impressions? Click-through-rate (CTR)? Cost-per-click (CPC)? Of course, it depends on your business goals. If your primary goal is to generate brand awareness, then impressions is an important metric to measure. But for many organisations, impressions are often the least important metric in PPC. Focusing too much on the wrong metrics means organisations cannot optimise their campaigns in order to achieve their business goals. This often results in them thinking that PPC is a waste of money, when in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Define your Goals
What does success look like to you? Below are some examples of the metrics to analyse based on business goals.
• Brand Awareness
It is one of the most promising goals of PPC marketing. Every business wants to be recognised by a larger audience to increase the demand and sale of its products or services. This goal can be measured by tracking impressions (the number of times your ad is shown on Google’s search results pages), impression share (number of possible impressions / actual number of received) clicks. Clicks are a good measure of the traffic to your website, whereas impressions are a good measure of how many people see your ads.
• Conversions
Lead generation is the ultimate of PPC campaigns. Converting your audience depends on the quality of your content in your ads and on your landing page. If the landing page of your PPC ad is highly attractive and engaging, offering value, it will generate successful leads. Each ad group requires a separate landing page to ensure the ads are being displayed to a relevant audience. Measuring the amount of conversions month on month allows you to understand whether or not your optimisations are working.
• Ad Relevancy
Measuring the click-through rate of an ad is a great way to determine how effective it is. A low CTR might indicate the ad isn’t relevant or compelling enough to users and might need some adjustments (PPC Protect). A high CTR indicates that you are attracting the right audience with your ad, meaning they are more likely to convert.
• Costs
Another key metric to include is cost per acquisition (CPA). Joe Allen of Belu Media adds, “I think the most important thing to include in a PPC report is the cost of sale and the cost of lead acquisition. The reason for this is if the cost per click is £1.00 as an example and it takes 100 clicks to generate a lead = £100.00 then the cost per lead is £100.” If success is spending your money in the most cost effective way, the CPA and return on ad spend (ROAS) are metrics to be measured.
It is important to develop a PPC strategy that will help you get the maximum of your efforts and budget, in line with your business goals. It is important to efficiently track performance through your PPC campaign metrics. By spending enough time, and paying full attention to which metrics indicate which success, you can considerably improve your PPC campaign performance and ROI (Perricone, 2021).
