PPC Reporting Tips – 5 Strategies To Help Your Business In 2023

PPC reporting can offer more insights than you’d first expect…

PPC advertising comes with a wide range of benefits, such as providing instant results and working well alongside other marketing channels such as SEO. However, another major benefit of PPC is the fact that it is highly measurable, providing insightful information into how your campaign is performing.

These metrics can be compiled and reflected on every month via PPC reporting, allowing marketers to review their campaigns to best understand how to optimise them going forward.

Not many people are aware of the opportunities provided by pay-per-click reporting, therefore, we have created a list of reporting tips and 5 strategies to help your business.

What is a PPC report?

A PPC report is exactly as the name implies – a report that summarises the results of your PPC campaigns. Pulling data from platforms like Facebook Ads, Google Ads etc., the report is curated by looking at key metrics from your campaigns, such as CPC (Cost Per Click), CTR (Click Through Rate) and CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). When you examine these metrics, you can find out whether you’re meeting your goals and, if not, what needs improving.

PPC reports should be well-structured and contain the correct metrics for marketers to see tangible data. When referring to the structure of a PPC report, you should break things down to a granular level. This can help to make large amounts of data more digestible.

The report should tie in with your overall business objectives.

What should be included in a PPC performance report?

We briefly mentioned some of the key metrics that should feature in a PPC performance report. Below, we’ve expanded on this to highlight the key metrics to include in order to get the most out of your PPC reports:

Campaign Goals – These are the objectives you set for your PPC campaigns so that they align with your needs and overall marketing targets. By setting measurable campaign goals, you can track the performance of your ads within your PPC campaign report and make improvements when necessary, to maximise results.

ROAS – ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is crucial when measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns as it gives you a definitive value when it comes to understanding how much revenue your marketing is generating. By keeping careful tabs on ROAS, you’re able to find out which of your ads are performing well so you can scale them to maximise results.

Attribution Models – Attribution models show which keywords and search queries cause your ads to receive clicks from users. With this information, you’re able to then optimise your ads so that you can target specific touchpoints within the user’s search journey and maximise clicks through to your site based on these behaviours.
Month over Month Data – Looking back into your monthly PPC campaign reports can help direct your future actions. By reviewing your account against a historically successful month, you’re able to have a deeper understanding of where you stand and where improvements can be made.
Impressions – an impression is counted every time your ad is shown on a search result page, or a website in the ad network

Clicks – one of the most important metrics, it shows you how many clicks your ads are getting and it is simply measured by how many people have clicked on your ad and been directed to your chosen landing page. Of course, you want to be receiving a higher volume of clicks each month.

Cost Per Click – CPC calculates how much you spend from your advertising budget, on average, for each click you receive. While a “good” CPC depends on other factors such as conversion rate, you want to have a lower CPC.

Click-Through Rate – CTR refers to how many people have clicked on your ad out of the number of people who have seen it. A high CTR indicates that you’re doing a good job and that your ads are performing as they should. Anything over 2% can be considered an above-average CTR. A lower CTR represents a problem, such as your ads not being compelling enough or that you’re targeting the wrong keywords.

Conversion Rate – conversion rate is calculated by the number of conversions divided by the total number of clicks. A conversion rate is a term used to describe when someone performs a key action that you are targeting, such as filling in a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter and, of course, making a purchase. This metric measures both the ad itself, as well as the effectiveness of your landing page in its ability to convert people.

Quality Score – an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality scores can lead to lower prices and better ad positions. Quality scores range from 0-10 and include metrics of expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.

Cost Per Conversion – this refers to the amount it has cost you for each conversion. The higher your conversion rate, the lower this number will be, indicating a more successful ad campaign.

Impression Share – the percentage of impressions that your ads received compared to the total number of impressions your ads could get. This is often used to work out the potential reach of your campaigns to set your budgets.

Once you’ve successfully reported on these metrics, you should also be able to analyse them to understand what they mean and how you can capitalise on them to create more successful campaigns.

What types of PPC reports are there?

Did you know that there are multiple options for PPC reports? Below are some essential PPC reports to grow your business:

Real-time PPC Performance Report

If your ad campaigns are often very reactive or include promotional deals that are time–sensitive, a real-time performance report is particularly helpful. It is a great way to see the highs and lows of an account and cuts out any unnecessary data to allow you to see exactly what is or isn’t working.

Device Report

It’s important to monitor performance across various devices, especially now with more and more people choosing to browse on mobiles. A device report can help you to gauge how your campaigns are performing on mobile, desktop and tablet to highlight strengths and weaknesses.

KPI Trends Report

Key performance indicator (KPI) reports are designed to show you how well you’re performing against your business goals. These reports can be used to highlight changes in performance, such as an increase in CTR when you’ve added optimised keywords. As with any campaign, the cost is one of the most important KPIs to report on. To find out more about this, please read our blog about setting achievable KPIs for PPC campaigns

Funnel Performance Report

Savvy marketers should look beyond the final result and instead, get to grips with every little detail along the sales funnel. A funnel performance report reflects on the effectiveness of your PPC ad campaigns at each point along the sales funnel, determining how much it costs overall to acquire a customer.

Cross Channel Report

Chances are, you will have more than one ad account, therefore, you don’t want to exclude any accounts from your PPC campaign reports. Cross-channel reports often have the largest amounts of data, highlighting more potential opportunities for improvement. You will be able to see which channels are performing well, compare clicks and impressions across these channels and assess the cost of keywords.

PPC Reporting Mistakes

If you’re not regularly monitoring the performance of your campaigns, there’s a chance you’ll make one of the following mistakes:

Not Knowing your Customer’s Lifetime Value

Knowing all of the important metrics and figures beforehand is the foundation of every successful campaign, but many people make the mistake of not fully understanding their customer’s lifetime value. Without this knowledge, you won’t be able to work out how much to bid per click, or how much you should be spending per acquisition. Get it right, and your campaigns will be properly targeted and profitable.

Not Using Location Targeting

If you’re a small business that serves customers locally, you want to make sure you’re targeting the right audience. Running ads in other towns and cities may sound like a good idea to increase brand exposure, but in reality, you’re only going to lose money. You’d be surprised at how many people neglect to consider this when piecing together their campaigns. So be sure to make use of Location Targeting to reach people in your area who are looking for what your business has to offer.

Setting & Forgetting Your Campaign

The "set and forget" approach to PPC doesn't always work. You need to make sure that your ads are current, that you’re using the best keywords, and that you’re using your budget wisely. You need to track costs so that you can constantly improve things. If you don’t tweak, change and optimise your campaigns regularly, you could be wasting a lot of money on ineffective ads.

Neglecting to Set Campaign Goals

When it comes to pay-per-click reporting, it's important that you have a clear goal in mind. If you know what you're trying to achieve with your campaign, you can set measurable goals and gauge whether or not they were successfully met. For example, Instead of simply aiming to increase your CTR, why not make this objective more specific by targeting a 1,000 per cent CTR increase? Having this numeric goal will allow you to accurately assess the progress of your campaign.

PPC Reporting Tools

Google/Microsoft Ads (in-built tools)

Google Ads reports provide performance metrics for users who interacted with your ads and then came through to your website. These reports provide a window into how you acquire customers, their behaviour on your site after acquisition, and their conversion patterns. Providing you with insight into which of your advertising strategies are working, and which ones could be improved.

In 2019, Bing Ads became Microsoft Advertising. This platform also offers several types of reports that provide deep insight into your data in real-time, so that you can monitor, manage and improve key aspects of your campaign such as visibility, click-through rate, and conversion rates.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a data visualization platform that makes reports easier to create and understand. The majority of its features are easy to use, and it allows for intuitive sharing and scheduling of reports. You’re able to import sets of data from various sources and turn them into easy-to-understand reports so that you can track KPIs, visualise trends and compare performance over time.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to receive real-time analysis and insights into your PPC campaigns. Among other measurement features, Its ‘Assisted Conversions’ report shows how many conversions were assisted by each active channel (Display, Mobile, Search Ads, Social Media and etc.) along with the value of those conversions and resulting revenue. With these metrics in hand, you can optimise your PPC budget by spending more on profitable channels and less on the channels that are bringing in the least conversions.

Third-party tools (such as Diginius)

To make cross-channel reporting even easier, you can take advantage of the Diginius Insight Software. This innovative software, developed in-house by our team of PPC experts, combines your sales and marketing data into one consolidated platform.