PPC Reporting Pitfalls: Avoid Common Mistakes

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What is the Problem?

PPC Reporting Pitfalls: Avoid Common Mistakes

Pay Per Click (PPC) reports are customized reports that provide complete information about the performance of a PPC Campaign, ad group, and keywords. PPC reporting basically provide an overview of the entire campaign which includes clicks, spend, and click through rates, conversion data, quality scores, display impressions, cost per click rates and much more.

Running such reports for your clients as often as possible is indispensable to develop a well-seasoned and lucrative PPC strategy. These reports truly are a treasure house of data, as it helps in optimizing the testing process and improves bidding and pricing tactics to find new keywords and placements.

PPC reporting is crucial as your client needs to know if you are hitting the goals, or at least making some progress.  It also gives you the opportunity to prove your worth and continue to earn good paychecks. So what is keeping you away from making great PPC reports? Let’s take a look:

Common PPC Reporting Mistakes Hampering Your Success

  1. Reporting Early

The accuracy of PPC reports is the proof to your clients that you are working devotedly. If you think you are doing well, don’t get excited about it and send your reports early. This is because your reports might not be able to display the right picture when talking particularly about the “Conversion” metric. This is because while clicks may go up quickly, conversions might not.

There can be a substantial time gap between when a customer clicks on an advertisement to when the actual conversion takes place. Longer conversion period is one reality you got to face, and this is one core reason why your PPC reports display disproportionate numbers of clicks VS conversions.

Because conversion data experience time delays when being imported from AdWords to another system waiting for some more time to get precise data would be all the worth.

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  1. Deceiving Visuals

Yes, visuals do add a zing to boring reports, but what if you show the wrong type of chart? It might actually make a point that you didn’t mean and your entire projects can get sidetracked. Remember creating these reports involves a lot of time and effort, but with poorly crafted visuals all your efforts can go waste. Carefully analyze and take some time to use the right charts to successfully visualize your data, and combine them with solid analysis. Because, if you don’t, your visuals might convey a totally different story.

  1. Improper Segmentation

Segmenting crucial data can give a whole new look to your reports. Your efforts display how well you understand the facts that will be beneficial for your clients. Improperly segmented reports look like raw data to the clients which do not display any meaning. Segmentation adds a new story to the reports which help clients to draw meaningful insights for making informed decisions. Few of the important segments you should be including in your reports are:

  • Devices
  • Networks
  • Brand vs non-brand
  • Hour of week
  • Audiences
  1. Data Bombarding

When there is too much of data in your PPC reports it makes it difficult to put it together in the right way to draw the right picture. Just because you have loads of data at your disbursal doesn’t mean you would throw it in the report. Remember, your client would not spare a single extra second digging into the data like you do. Well, ultimately that is the main reason they hired you, so simply distill down the things they would really want/need to know.

  1. Invest Extra Time In Creating Reports

According to stats, “99% of the emailed reports are never opened”. So, do you think investing extra time in creating them is worth? But again, this doesn’t mean you wouldn’t concentrate on producing valuable reports. You cannot master making one perfect PPC report in the beginning of your project, but with time you would understand what exactly your clients are looking for in their PPC reports. Once you know the key elements, concentrate only on them rather than focusing on things that are least important.

What Does A Good PPC Report Include?

Your clients might not explicitly tell you, but ultimately they all want to know about “CONVERSIONS” and how much it’s actually costing them. Typically a good PPC report should include:

  • Conversion Performance
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA)
  • Overall clicks/impressions
  • Campaign Performance
  • Device performance
  • Performance by Network

You can follow our blog for better understanding of some Alternative PPC Ad Network as well

In 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 by making use of the information you gathered over the course of 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 depended on your expert insight.

Well, I hope that you will also find this list of ppc blogs and ppc forums/discussions useful. Good luck!

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