Unlocking the power of PPC Analytics: Which KPIs to choose and how?
With the rise of digital marketing in the modern business sphere, marketing campaigns are becoming more adaptable, computable, and reliable. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is one of the avenues of digital marketing which is employed by many businesses to leverage the power of search engines for greater exposure of their brand.
The progress of a PPC campaign is measured by KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which work like mercury on a thermometer, fluctuating to offer a precise set of data as to where a campaign is thriving and where it is lacking. While there are many KPIs to track, the onus of selecting a few of them to focus on for a particular campaign can be quite confusing. Fret not. Here we are to unload the burden off your shoulders and inform you of the PPC KPIs you should focus on for your campaign’s success.
The most commonly used PPC KPIs in digital marketing campaigns
Any PPC advertising campaign is carried out with a number of things in consideration. What’s the product in focus? What’s the target audience? Where is the location of the campaign? What is the purpose of the campaign? All of these questions, and many more, define the outline of your PPC campaign, making it easier to understand which factors should be considered before making the choice for monitoring PPC KPIs. Some of the most commonly monitored KPIs are: –
- Clicks: The number of times users have clicked on your ads.
- Impressions: The number of times your ads were displayed to users.
- Click-through rate (CTR): The ratio of clicks to impressions, expressed as a percentage.
- Cost-per-click (CPC): The average cost of a single click on your ad.
- Conversion rate: The ratio of conversions (sales or desired actions) to clicks, expressed as a percentage.
- Cost-per-acquisition (CPA): The average cost of acquiring a customer or converting a user into a sale.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The return on investment from the campaign, expressed as a ratio or percentage.
3 Things to keep in mind for choosing the right KPI(s) for your campaign
Just like a sword cannot be used to sew clothes, and a needle cannot be used to fight wars, not every PPC KPI can produce results relevant to every campaign. Each campaign has its own nature, purpose, and requirements. Here are three key KPI determinants for you to monitor: –
#1 The PPC Platform being used
While Google is by far the most popular platform for PPC campaigns, commanding as many as 8.5 billion searches per day, it’s not the only one. Google is ideal for brands whose PPC strategy is more text-oriented since its SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) primarily showcase text-based results. However, PPC strategies are also based on platforms like Instagram which are photo and video-based. In both cases, the KPIs in focus would be different as the way the audience responds to an ad is different on both platforms.
#2 Demographics of your audience
The demography of people plays a major role in their choice of platform, online behavior, and reception towards certain designs and motifs presented in a campaign. Hence, PPC ads should be designed keeping the culture and psychology of the demography of your audience in mind. KPIs should also be tracked accordingly, with impressions being prioritized if the demographic essentials are introduced to the product or service for the first time, while clicks and CTR should be monitored after a certain level of impressions is reached and it is placed well in the target market.
#3 Purpose of advertising
The motive or purpose of PPC advertising plays a vital role in relaying the appropriate KPI to monitor for assessing the effectiveness of the campaign. If the aim of the campaign is just to raise brand awareness, then monitoring impressions is ideal to get desired results. However, if the aim is to generate leads or drive greater conversions, a number of other KPIs like CTR and Conversion rate should be carefully checked.
Conclusion
Tracking PPC KPIs is quintessential to ensure your PPC campaign has no loopholes that might adversely affect the performance of the campaign and ultimately, pose a hurdle to business goals. To monitor all known PPC KPIs is time-consuming and wasteful of resources and money while ignoring any important PPC KPI can prove to be detrimental to the effectiveness of the campaign. Hence, it is essential to analyze our needs, requirements, and resources thoroughly before making a choice on which KPIs to track.
Partner with Cliffex to gain access to our expertise in PPC advertising and a sophisticated, nuanced monitoring system of all necessary KPIs which bring you a comprehensive report of the performance of your PPC campaign with effective solutions to ensure each step you take, uplifts you to success.
