In "The Shawshank Redemption," Andy spends 19 years painstakingly digging a tunnel to freedom. His success hinges not just on persistence but on digging in the correct direction. One wrong turn and all his efforts would lead nowhere, keeping him forever imprisoned.
The same goes for your PPC reports. Regardless of how perfect your values and graphs are and how effective your report designs are, missing out on common things will keep you from reaching the heights.
Source: PPC Hero
Well, the good news is that others have made such mistakes, too. So, you have partners to guide you through. We are one among them. Scroll down to learn our views on what could be going wrong in your PPC campaign reports that keep you from moving ahead.
1. Ignoring Key Metrics
Metrics are an important part of any PPC report as they carry information about the success or failure of the campaign. Any PPC report will have multiple metrics, which, based on the client’s goal, can be categorized into important and vanity metrics. While important metrics offer actionable insights into the happenings, vanity metrics offer no associated details. The presence of a specific number of likes or shares on a video does no good other than to boast. However, important metrics offer detailed information. These are as follows:
Click-Through Rate (CTR): Depicted as a percentage, it is obtained from the number of clicks and impressions. It tells about the quality score and how well the ads and keywords are performing.
Cost Per Click (CPC): It is the direct representation of what each click costs. It is an effective metric as it provides the average expenditure incurred over all the clicks.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): It tells about the cost incurred to acquire one customer. It is marked by the customer's completion of a specific action. The cost incurred will be due to expenditure on the marketing channel or campaign.
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): It is a KPI metric that informs about the revenue earned on each spent dollar. It is a simple indicator of the profit or loss incurred by the client.
Tips for Prioritizing Key Metrics in Reports
To ensure prioritization of key metrics, it is essential to:
- Primarily identify the goals and metrics of interest
- Focus on high-impact metrics like the ones indicating conversion or revenue
- Utilize metrics to derive an obvious interpretation
- Monitor constantly at specific intervals
2. Misinterpreting Data
Simple representation of numbers or patterns is an easy act to do. However, it holds no value and offers poor data interpretation. A PPC report is expected to be contextually rich, such that a glance at the report must convey information to the viewer. Lack of labels in the report or additional information limits taking an easy overview of the report. Further, it limits root cause analysis and provides no insights into market conditions, trends, alignment with client goals, or the platform in discussion.
The data presented in such a form is certain to be misunderstood and offer a wrong conclusion. The associated issues include decision-making based on surface-level knowledge, which eventually acts as the wrong base for future strategies. It may also lead to a focus on short-term variations and misinterpretation of correlations. For instance, the increase in the value of X and Y may indicate their dependence or independence with each other. Interpreting correct relations is possible only through proper analysis.
Strategies for Accurate Data Interpretation
Apart from obvious labeling and clear presentation, some other helpful strategies are:
- Ensure proper correlation between data points beforehand
- Combine the metrics to look at the big picture concerning specific resources like budget
- Analyze the PPC report based on audience and campaign segments
- Do account for market dynamics before heading to any conclusion
- Take the help of advanced analytical tools
3. Overlooking Conversion Tracking
Conversion Tracking is an important method to know the origin and journey of a customer’s interest in the client’s product or service. Providing precise data, they offer a direct link to the effectiveness of a campaign or ad. They are also helpful in optimizing expenditures and budget allocation toward the campaign. Additionally, they are helpful in A/B testing by providing a clear comparison of different ads or their variants. They are a reliable source for predicting future campaign performance as well.
One of the common and harmful mistakes you can make is not setting up or improperly configuring conversion tracking. The direct loss is the inability to measure the straight information about campaign success along with inaccurate ROI calculations. The budget is also likely to fail owing to the inability to understand the right part of expenditure, leading to repetition of exercise.
Steps to Ensure Accurate Conversion Tracking
You can save yourself from future losses by considering the following points:
- Identifying your definition of success or metrics that matter most to you
- Setting up accurate tracking methods like CRM for offline tracking and MetaPixel for website tracking
- Implementing tracking code and proper exclusions
- Updating the platform’s conversion pages
4. Failing to Segment Data
Audience segmentation is an effective strategy to utilize the ad maximally. Not only does it offer accurate targeting, but it is also more likely to offer more conversions. While device-based segmentation is effective in offering customers ease of access, location-based segmentation allows customers to match their exact requirements. Further, it reveals the relationship between audience and ads and landing pages. Segmenting data eases interpretation, as discussed previously.
Missing out on the data segmentation leads to an inability to identify the performance variations across diverse groups accurately, hides performance disparities, and overlooks device-specific user behaviors and preferences. It also impacts budget allocation and leads to competitive disadvantages.
How to Segment Data Effectively for Deeper Insights
Effective data segmentation is possible through the following:
- Identification of key segment dimensions such as device, location, time, campaign type and others
- Analyze performance based on each of these and identify anomalies (if present)
- Use visualization tools for easier pattern recognition
- Identify outperforming and underperforming segments while also looking for the reasons for their existence
5. Neglecting Negative Keywords
Running a campaign by spending money, you would not want it to be wasted on unwanted clicks. The unwanted clicks can be the ones where the user is looking for look-alike products or accessories rather than actual products. Learning this with an example, if you are dealing with diamond rings, you would not want the clicks of the users looking for cheap or imitation of diamond rings. Similarly, users are also not likely to buy the product if they are looking for a diamond ring cleaner. Hence, including negative words like ‘cheap’ and ‘cleaner’ can help prevent the popping of ads in irrelevant searches.
Using negative keywords can help you enhance the conversion rates and CTR and offer direct traffic to increase the effectiveness of your campaign. Among the common mistakes associated with negative keywords is not updating them based on the ad. Not only should it be as per the campaign, but it also lowers quality scores and leads to wasted ad spend. It also poorly impacts the expenditures.
Best Practices for Managing Negative Keywords
Owing to numerous harms, you would not want to lose the money with ignorance. Hence, we recommend:
- Weekly or bi-weekly review search term report
- Focus on creating a full-fledged list for identification and usage of negative keyword
- Use automation processes or third-party tools for the addition of high-cost and non-converting terms
- Never avoid market or competitor research to know the exact negative keywords in your industry
6. Not Regularly Reviewing Reports
Due to the dynamicity of the market and competition, one can not rely on reports updated once in a while. Active working is important in the field. Thus, regular and consistent report analysis and updates help to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the campaigns. Consistent report analysis and updates also open pathways for effective research and review of your competitor and optimization based on changes.
Additionally, sporadic reporting is a common procedure witnessed in agencies. While this may be performed to overcome regular reviewing, the maximum results are rarely obtained here. The practice leads to lost opportunities due to the inability to take immediate action. For instance, ad performance and keyword adjustment require instant decision-making and strategy.
Tips for Setting Up a Regular Reporting Schedule
To ease your regular reporting schedule, we recommend the following:
- Decide an appropriate frequency to analyze each metrics
- Incorporate automated reporting tools
- Set up the alert or notification system to alarm about increase or decrease in metrics
- Set up a meeting schedule for reporting analysis and updates
7. Ignoring Ad Copy Performance
While your ads are responsible for CTR, the ad copy serves the important purpose of conversions. Ad copywriting requires a creative and marketing touch. One of the effective ways to ensure quality performance of ad copy is by incorporating three important elements: talking about savings in amounts, incorporating fear of missing out (FOMO), and testimonials. These play a key role in bringing out the conversion.
Lack of analysis and optimization in copy ad performance can be easily witnessed through a surge in CTR but poor conversions and quality scores. The absence of these can also negatively influence the cost per click (CPC) and cause a disbalance in the budget.
Strategies For Testing and Improving Ad Copy
A few methods to test and improve ad copy include:
- Identification of slang, favorite keywords and effective tone of the target audience is most crucial
- Exhibit how you stand out from others
- Incorporate the necessity of the product and importance of selecting you
- Focus on CTA
8. Overlooking Landing Page Insights
The essence of working on a landing page can be understood by a company that values honesty and trust. A customer wants to know if you are true to your promises. One of the easiest ways of sticking to your words is by focusing on the content that attracts customers but also exhibits truthfulness. The landing page must talk about the promises in the ad and maintain consistency with its content. Further, it should also be relevant and high in quality.
The landing pages must be constantly evaluated through insights for performance. Factors like slow loading time, excessive content, hidden calls to action, and the requirement to fill up long forms deter users from conversions. Focusing on the metrics and performance of the landing page tells a lot about the presence of these and more reasons.
Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages Based on Report Data
Besides working on the above-mentioned reasons, you can also optimize the landing page with the following points:
- Updating the page
- A lack of data can indicate the presence of broken links
- Emphasize the optimization of landing pages linked to high-performing sources
- Metrics like low pages per session require a focus on CTA
- Look at the interaction insights with mobile users
- Use behavior and preference data for personalized user experience
9. Mismanaging Budget Allocation
With an easy route to over and underspending, the journey towards effective budget management in PPC campaigns remains a challenge. However, focussing on the same offers strategic allocation of resources and cost efficiency with promises of better returns. It maximizes ROI while allowing seamless adaptation to changing customer behavior and market conditions. The PPC budget also allows for performing keyword research and using the most effective ones.
One of the common mistakes companies often make is not adjusting the budget based on performance data. It leads to the running of old ads, which eventually lowers the quality score and provides a poor conversion rate. It also limits the optimization and testing options.
Strategies for Optimizing Budget Allocation
Some of the best strategies to ensure optimal budget allocation are:
- Ensure diverse budget allocation across different channels
- Set a specific amount of budget based on campaign priority
- Test different ratios of budgets on all the platforms and choose appropriate ones
- Segregate budgets based on keywords
10. Overcomplicating Reports
The presence of too much data in your PPC reports makes it difficult to put together the right way. The consequence is a lack of ability to draw the right picture. Regardless of the quantity of available data, presenting all of it isn’t a strategic or right move. A smart, clear and concise presentation is certain to help your efforts get noticed.
Even if you create an overly complex and detailed report, the reader isn’t going to spend their time looking at or deciphering it. A clutter-free report that makes the impression of being easily understandable and not being time taken is more likely to get noticed and be glanced at. Further, this is the exact reason why you are preparing the reports and getting paid for them!
Tips for Simplifying Reports for Better Client Understanding
Better client understanding is possible with:
- Personalization of reports along with keeping priority or important campaigns or metrics at notice
- Keeping it short and simple
- Creating a properly structured report
- Automating reporting workflows
11. Not Setting Clear Goals
The value of setting up clear goals is immense and obvious. Yet, we enlighten you with a few, and among them, you can directly enhance website traffic, boost sales, generate leads, and raise brand awareness. The goals can offer focus and direction to move towards, rather than juggling with multiple customer segments, trends and market dynamics at once. Setting goals also allows budget allocation and performance.
While aligning PPC reports with metrics and expectations from specific goals is crucial for effective strategy planning, certain businesses still lack it. The lack of alignment again leads to directionless working, which leads to poor results and useless over expenditure of resources.
How to Set and Track SMART Goals?
Setting up SMART goals requires ensuring the goal follows the motive of designing a smart goal. It should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. To be precise, it should have all the attributes that make it practical and offer scope to work on it. Tracking the SMART goals is possible by:
- Using tools and software
- Establishing a baseline
- Setting up regular checkpoints and milestones
- Incorporating proper adjustment as required
12. Ignoring Competitor Analysis
While you may know everything, competitors always know something else that is important to keep them ahead. Checking out their performance allows for healthy competition and scope to succeed based on changing market conditions and customer behavior. The activity of monitoring the competitor's performance helps in setting up industry or market benchmarks, identifying industry trends, finding key competitors, optimizing prices and much more.
A report is also expected to have a competitor’s analysis. Neglecting them leads to lagging behind on social media, having low reach, poor customer response, and a lack of customer interest in your product and service.
Techniques for Incorporating Competitor Analysis
To ensure remaining ahead of competitors, the following actions can help:
- Talking about a strategy to incorporate refined keywords based on research
- Optimizing budget allocation and bidding methods
- Gain insight into competitor’s ad position and enhance yours accordingly
- Identify the customer segmentation and their target audience
13. Failing to Provide Actionable Insights
Clear recommendations save the guesswork of potential PPC report readers. The direct consequence is it is less likely to be ignored. Rather, it is more likely to be glanced at, owing to the requirement of lesser time investment in going through it. With clear recommendations, we again emphasize incorporating contextual information. However, it mainly includes suggesting novel strategies or ones based on competitors' analysis.
A lack of actionable steps is generally interpreted as a waste of time and leads to a lack of productivity and efficiency in meetings. It also leads to poor performance, where they fail to adapt to changing conditions. Also, it limits the progress.
How to derive and communicate actionable insights
To ensure effective communication of actionable insights, follow these strategies:
- Incorporate visuals
- Focus on storytelling
- Put the objectives and goals in the hierarchy
- Ensure data segmentation
- Put forward only highly required and appropriate metrics
14. Lack of Customization in Reports
Regardless of the position of the point, it holds high significance in PPC reports. One of the observed phenomena states that your most important points tend to go unnoticed in a generalized report. However, everything you state in a customized report becomes relevant. Building trust among clients, these pose the impression that insights and suggestions are specific to their campaign rather than being generic. Since the requirements and goals of every business are unique, relying on one-size-fits-all reports is certain to be counterproductive and inefficient.
Tips for Customizing Reports for Different Clients and Campaigns
Customizing PPC reports is easy. All you need to do is:
- Know your customer thoroughly, like their goals, KPIs and metrics
- Incorporate brand-specific logos, colors and other information
- Ensure consistent format throughout the report
- Highlight key insights
- Provide context and analysis relevant to the client and campaign
Conclusion
PPC reporting is not about just regurgitating information. Still, you need to give your clients a comprehensive yet concise report. The idea to steal this deal would be to make use of the information you gathered throughout a campaign’s lifespan. Bank on such data and make solid recommendations, which can be a total game changer for your clients. Remember, your client’s success is largely dependent on your expert insight.
I hope that you will also find this list of PPC blogs and PPC forums/discussions useful. Good luck!
Common Questions About PPC Reports
Q1. What is the Quality Score in PPC?
Quality Score is a metric in Pay Per Click that is used by search engines to analyze the amount of value and quality of the ads and keywords. Click-through rate, relevance of each keyword and quality of the landing page define the quality score.
Q2. What are the different PPC platforms to consider in 2024?
While Google Ads is the topmost and most popular Pay Per Click platform in the world, others are highly relevant as well. It includes Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and other such platforms.
Q3. What are the key metrics to include in the PPC report?
Common and important metrics to include in the PPC report are Cost Per Click (CPC), Click-Through Rate (CTR), Cost Per Conversion (CPA), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), conversion rate and quality score.
Q4. What are the benefits of PPC Audit?
PPC audit helps to identify wasted Ad spend, optimize account structure, improve conversion rate and protect the brand’s reputation.
Q5. How often should I update the PPC report?
PPC reports must be updated based on the campaign size, the time required to gather significant data and the business goals. While metrics like clicks, click-through rate and cost per click can be updated daily, landing page performance and ad performance metrics are good to update bi-weekly. However, it should be noted that there is no correct answer to the question. It varies individually.
