The Most Important PPC KPIs You Should Be Tracking
As a Pay-per-Click advertiser, a vast amount of information is available to you about your ads’ performance. So much so, in fact, that the sheer volume of data can sometimes seem overwhelming. The trick is to understand which Key Performance Indictors (KPIs) are most important, when you need to use them and when to tweak things. Changes can be made quickly, but it’s vital that you focus on the right metrics and prioritise KPIs carefully.
What are your goals?
What do you want to achieve with your PPC campaign? What impact do you want it to have on your brand? Determine and define your marketing goals before deciding anything else. You can then prioritise the KPIs most closely aligned with these aims.
Here are some of the main measures you may want to concentrate on:
Measuring sales lift
You could measure sales increases as a result of your campaign(s), either for in-store or e-commerce purchases, or for lead generation. Alternatively, you may simply decide to measure revenue increase more directly.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
This is another key metric and it looks at revenue as a ratio to spending on advertising. Work it out by dividing revenue by how much you have spent on advertising. Especially as you scale up your campaigns, this helps you keep tabs on whether what you spend is delivering the value you expect. An alternative, or additional, measure is to look at Return On Investment (ROI). An important one, since ROAS confines itself to advertising spend.
Campaign health metrics
These may not, strictly speaking, be KPIs, but they can indicate whether campaigns could have room to improve. They include click-through-rate, or CTR, which shows how relevant your adverts are to those who see them. If it’s low, either you’re not aiming for the right audience or your ads may need some work.
Conversion rate (i.e. how often, on average, an ad interaction leads to a conversion) tells you whether your landing pages are properly optimised and relevant. Again, you could be targeting the wrong audience.
Impression share is the percentage of impressions that your ads receive compared with the number of impressions that your ads could get.
Meanwhile, on-site engagement, which looks at bounce rate, how long someone stays on your pages, and how many pages they visit, offers useful information about how interested your audience is in what you offer.
Finally, don’t ignore quality score, Google’s rating of your keywords and PPC ads in terms of relevance and quality. This helps decide cost per click and again is a useful score of where your ads could perform better.
How we can help
Talk to us at Front Page Advantage about assessing the performance of your PPC efforts. We’re all about constant monitoring and tweaking to deliver tangible results for our clients. Get in touch today for a chat about how your ads are doing, and whether you’re focusing on the best KPIs for your business.