In our blog, we already explained how to run a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. In short, you need to choose specific keywords to target, then bid on them, and then create your ads and landing pages.
But the work doesn’t end here. Now it’s time to start monitoring your results. But how exactly does PPC tracking work and which metrics should you keep up with? We’ll explain in this post.
What is PPC tracking?
PPC tracking is the process of controlling the results of your PPC campaigns by tracking several key performance indicators and metrics that show how well different ads and campaigns perform.
Why is it so important?
It’s simple – without tracking PPC, you won’t be able to see which ads produce positive results and which don’t.
Yes, when you first start your PPC campaign, you approximately understand the CPC (cost per click) and popularity indicators, but in general, you simply play a guessing game.
When you fully understand which ads bring you positive results, you’ll be able to pause or improve the faulty ones, and spend a larger amount of money on the successful ones.
PPC key performance indicators (KPI) to track
Google Ads is the platform through which you can create and manage PPC ads on Google, and at the same time, check plenty of informative metrics about your campaigns.
Here are 5 PPC metrics that we would like to highlight.
- Impressions and impression share
Impressions refer to the number of times your content is displayed on Google, no matter if it was clicked or not. If Google displays your ad 5 times on a given day, you have 5 impressions for this day.
Also, Google Ads gives information about impression share, and it is equally important to keep up with this metric too. Impression share is the percentage of total impressions that your ad receives compared to the total number of impressions that your ad could get. If your ad would have appeared in 50 searches yesterday but only appeared in 10, that means your impression share is 20%.
Knowing this percentage, you can see how much competition you have for a given keyword or campaign in general.
- Clicks and click-through rate (CTR)
Clicks are the indicator that shows how many people clicked on your ads. This is simple, but not really useful. And what is definitely useful is the click-through rate (CTR) indicator.
CTR is a metric that measures the total number of clicks per your total number of impressions. In the end, we get a proportion of users that clicked on your ad. Knowing this figure, we understand whether your ad is effective and should you or should you not do something about it.
- Conversions and conversion rate
Let’s move on. Now we turn to the conversions. Conversion is an action that’s counted when someone not only clicks on your ad, but interacts with it: e.g. buying a product or service.
Frankly speaking, this is probably the most important indicator, because the whole point of your ad goal is to make people buy whatever you offer.
If you want to find out your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the number of clicks. You’ll get a percentage of people who end up converting.
If you have a low conversion rate, there are several reasons for it:
- Your site and landing page design is difficult and people simply can’t complete specific tasks
- Your offer is too expensive or not valuable enough to your target audience
Try to keep track of this metric and, if possible, change or adapt your ad to potential customers.
- Cost per click (CPC)
Cost per click (CPC) is a valuable metric to track because it shows the price that you pay for each click that your ad receives.
To calculate CPC, divide the total cost incurred by a given ad by the total number of clicks that the ad has earned. The result will tell you how much, on average, you pay for each click.
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition (CPA) refers to how much you pay for each conversion that a campaign earns. As with CPC, this metric allows you to see how much your results cost.
To find the CPA, divide the total cost of a campaign by the number of conversions that the campaign drives. The result – the average sum of money you pay for each conversion. If your campaign has a high CPA, it means it’s not as good as others at converting users.
Get help with your conversion tracking today from «Seologic»
Just knowing the theory about PPC metrics is not enough. In practice, this requires hard and diligent work, which requires a lot of time.
If you’re struggling to drive better results with your PPC campaign, «Seologic» can give you a hand!
To get started with us, contact us online today!