Pay-per-click advertising is such a long-standing and vast digital marketing topic. It offers one of the most effective tools to attract and grow target audiences and quickly convert link clicks into sales. However, you must constantly monitor and tweak your PPC campaign to earn a return on your investment.
As a reputable ecommerce PPC agency, our team at Bear North Digital excels in helping clients develop and launch fruitful campaigns. We understand the essential role PPC reporting plays in helping you alter your campaign and improve your strategy. Our guide below outlines how to optimize your campaign for success with proper pay-per-click reporting practices.
How Does PPC Function in E-Commerce?
Pay-per-click is a digital marketing effort where a marketing team purchases ad space on search engine results. The purchase typically includes the adâs position within the results page and the keywords a searcher uses to obtain their desired search results. Specific terms will trigger the PPC ad to appear at the top of the search results alongside other paid ads.
The model involves the searcher clicking on the ad link. Then, the link opens a landing page with a product or service offer relevant to the searcherâs query. The engine user might finalize a purchase with the advertised company if the ad appeals to them.
E-commerce PPC helps you add new purchasers to your growing customer base. However, you must develop well-rounded, industry-appropriate marketing strategies to attract visitors and inspire them to purchase your products. Then, tweak your campaign using various digital advertising methods to improve the adâs performance. You can employ campaign optimization through pay-per-click reporting.
What Is PPC Reporting?
A PPC report acts as a PPC performance analysis. Youâll gather data called key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine your adâs successes and failures. Then, you assess the KPIs to determine which campaign areas to adjust.
Your report should include the elements listed below:
- Cost per acquisition: CPA follows a basic formula: the money spent on the campaign divided by the number of conversions. It determines whether you published a lucrative ad.
- Cost per click: How do you spend for each ad click you earn? A successful campaign has a low CPC.
- Return on ad spend: Your ROAS determines whether youâve earned a high return on investment.
- Ad click-through rate: The ad CTR formula is the number of times visitors click on your ad divided by the ad display frequency. Ideally, your CTR climbs throughout the campaign.
- Timeframe: Set a timeframe allowing your ad to perform and gather metrics. Once that timeframe ends, youâll draft another report.
- Goals: How do you want your ad campaign to perform? Do you have set metrics youâd like to achieve? Your answers are examples of campaign goals.
- Conversions: Conversions are one of the most essential campaign goals. The term refers to whether your audience takes the desired action or not.
- Targeting: You choose a target audience for your ad campaign. The targeting data determines whether you successfully attracted that demographic.
- Metrics: Your preferred PPC tools will provide various metrics to help you understand your adâs performance.
- Historical data: Most tools allow you to view your metrics by the week or month. This historical data will display any noteworthy trends in ad performance.
Creating a Reporting Strategy
You now understand the basic terminology associated with PPC reports. How do you streamline these digital advertising metrics into a narrative that offers guidance? The brief guide below can assist you in perfecting your PPC ad and improving other digital marketing media used for your business.
Identify Realistic KPIs
All plans begin with a goal. Identify what you want from your PPC campaign. Some goals may include:
- Completed purchases for a particular product or service
- Increased awareness about a topic or cause
- Gathering contact information from visitors
- Learning more about your target audience
After you set a few goals, youâll determine the timeframe and which KPIs align with them. The KPIs will help you understand when to tweak your strategy to achieve your goals.
Create a Comprehensive Campaign Outline
Use extensive research to develop your campaign outline. The outline performs as a digital map to help you move from the starting point toward each goal. Your outline might include:
- Tools such as Google Ads reporting to assist you in report development
- Resources like Google Keyword Planner for gleaning optimized keywords to add to your campaign
- Competitor analysis to determine how your competition develops high-performing PPC campaigns
Set your campaign up for success by implementing these ideas.Â
Customize the Metric Columns
Custom metric columns save time with each visit to your account. You can choose the metrics you want to prioritize and your preferred date range for each metric collection cycle. When you log into your PPC accounts, youâll immediately see the data you need on your dashboard.
Settle into a Routine
How often do you want to check on and organize your metrics data? Running your ad for a month or two might help you determine the most productive cycle for your goals. Then, you can identify whether trends appear within a few days, weeks, or months.
Once you know the most informative data cycles, routinely check your dashboard for insights. Collect these metrics during each visit to develop your report piece by piece.
Craft a Narrative Using Analytics
PPC reporting metrics tell your campaignâs story. When youâre ready to draft your report, determine what narrative the trends show. The following tips can help you find the narrative:
- Examining other metrics outside of your custom columns might provide more context. However, you shouldnât obsess over them. Focus on achieving the goals and their connected KPIs you identified in the beginning.
- Record all adjustments you make to the campaign. Youâll reexamine your previous decisions when drafting your report.
- Pay attention to trends your KPIs demonstrate. How do they correlate to any adjustments you make?
- Choose charts and graphs that make the data readable. For example, a pie chart works well for a few percentage displays. It doesnât effectively display more than five statistics like a data graph might.
- Draft brief statements to summarize the data youâve presented.
Examine How Your Brand Compares By Industry Standards
Performance comparisons between your business and a competitorâs act as powerful storytellers and motivators. They help you finetune your direction while informing your decisions. Include available competitor data in your PPC reports.
Outline Clear Directives
You should add definitive statements at the end of each report that directs you or your audience on the next steps to take. These steps should improve your PPC campaignâs performance and targeting methods according to the dataâs narrative. Follow these directives, and record your results for the next report cycle.
What You Should Avoid When Developing Your Reports
PPC ads offer diverse types of data that can help you with further marketing strategies. However, your reports can catch you off guard when your focus strays to irrelevant details. Avoid the following temptations when drafting an e-commerce PPC report.
Obsessing Over Individual Metrics
While you should focus on your KPIs, remember that they are still only a piece of a larger puzzle. You shouldnât allow a single metric to dictate the direction you take. Moreover, make metric data part of a larger project, not an individual obsession.
Choosing Unclear Visuals
Organizing data into graphs and charts helps you visualize the data narrative more easily. However, you should only choose visuals fluidly and logically to display the data. Experiment with two varieties of visuals to determine which you can easily digest and understand.
Focusing Only on PPC
PPC ads are just one opportunity to increase your sales and customer base. Learn what advertising tools your competitors commonly use to diversify your marketing efforts and allocate resources appropriately. If your industry leans heavily into PPC, great! However, you might discover that similar brands focus on other areas like social media.
Best Practices For E-Commerce PPC Reports
Effective, data-driven PPC reports follow a few principles to communicate to the reader. Explore the best practices listed below to further improve your PPC reports, adding them to a growing data narrative.
Understand How Negative Keywords Work
Negative keywords are terms not related to the product or service showcased in your ad. For example, you want to purchase a variegated houseplant to brighten and elevate your office decor. Therefore, you wouldnât search for âcommon houseplant varieties online.â That term is a negative keyword.
While negative keywords relate to the overarching product, they have characteristics that deviate from yours. Use negative keywords to specify the appropriate search results for your ad.
Test, Evolve, Test!
Each campaign should perform better than the last. Significant performance improvements require consistent A/B testing. Youâll publish two ads. After reviewing your report findings, youâll adjust each ad accordingly. The ads with the best performance offer a template for future success.
Optimize Other Pertinent Elements
PPC ads consist of elements such as:
- Ad copy, like headlines and descriptions, that resonate with your audience
- Captivating landing pages
- Inspiring calls to action
Experiment with these essentials to perfect your campaign. Â
Occasionally Review Your Performance
Tracking within your predetermined timeframe allows you to identify trends in how your audience responds to your ads. Your data visuals should demonstrate these trends. The report directives should also instruct you on how to take advantage of the trends.
FAQs About E-Commerce PPC Reporting
What PPC data should I analyze?
You should analyze quality score, audience, traffic, budget, and click-through rate. This data will give you a broad idea about how your campaign performs and where you can improve it.
What is PPC forecasting?
PPC forecasting is how a campaign developer translates metrics to understand potential future outcomes. It works much like weather forecasting where a meteorologist predicts weather patterns using circumstantial data.
How do I measure PPC success?
You can measure PPC success using a variety of diverse metrics. However, your click-through rate offers the most insight into whether searchers react to your campaign and how they react.
What is the most important KPI in PPC?
The conversion rate is among the most important KPIs in a PPC campaign. This metric measures the amount of people who take the desired action after viewing your advertisement.
Claim Your Free Strategy Session from Bear North Digital
PPC reporting offers a clear overview of your PPC ad performance. This overview is essential to publishing ads that feed your e-commerce success. However, the entire PPC process includes multiple arduous steps, including Google Ads conversion setup. Let Bear North Digitalâs team guide your ecommerce venture toward PPC success. Claim your free strategy session by calling (218) 216-8692 today.
