While many digital marketing plans focus heavily on organic search results to bring in an audience that genuinely is interested in a particular product or service, others include pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in their digital marketing strategy to help put them in front of their audience. To determine whether investing in PPC ads is a smart move, you need to be able to conduct a PPC data analysis.
What is PPC Data and Why Do You Need It?
PPC data refers to pay-per-click data, which tells a brand whether or not their PPC ads are working or not. While many people believe that organic search engine content is the way to go, studies show that approximately 79% of marketers believe that PPC is “hugely” beneficial for their businesses.
How do you determine the success of PPC advertising? Through PPC data analysis.
What is PPC Analysis?
PPC data analysis is exactly what it sounds like, the analysis of your PPC data to determine your PPC campaign’s success. What sets some PPC data analysis’ apart from others is the depth of the analysis and which types of analysis you may conduct, which can include:
- Exploratory analysis
- Statistical analysis
- Historical analysis
- Associative analysis
- Comparative analysis
How is PPC Campaign Success Calculated?
This will depend heavily on what you consider to be a success. Are you looking to increase website traffic? Then you’ll want to monitor your clicks/click-through rate carefully. What if you’re looking to increase your conversion rate? Then you’ll want to monitor your conversions.
The key to determining your PPC campaign’s success is choosing the metrics you find most pertinent to your campaign, determining your current/average benchmark, and then the desired metric throughout your campaign. If you see a positive change, then you know your campaign is successful. If not – then it’s time to reevaluate your plan.
5 Key Metrics to Track During Your PPC Data Analysis
If you think a PPC campaign may be beneficial to your digital marketing strategy, then you’ll want to make sure you are including these 5 key metrics when doing your PPC data analysis:
1. Clicks
Clicks refer to how many times someone clicked on your ad. This is a critical metric to monitor because it tells you not only how many times your ad was clicked, but depending on the software you’re using, it can give you an insight into who has been clicking, where they are clicking from, and more.
2. Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate refers to the total percentage of people who convert after clicking on your advertisement. The definition of conversion will vary depending on the purpose of your ad. For instance, if you are looking to make a sale, the conversion is the completion of a new sale. If your ad’s goal is to get potential leads to give you their email in exchange for a downloadable document, then the conversion will be the total number of downloads.
3. Quality Score
Quality score is defined as your ads’ estimated quality, the keywords you use, and your landing pages. Google prioritizes these quality scores because it’s determined to deliver only the most relevant information to those using the search engine. The higher your quality score, the more successful your campaign.
4. Impressions/Impression Share (CPM)
Impressions are an important metric to monitor, especially if your ad’s goal is to help you build brand awareness. An impression is most easily defined as the total number of people who see your ad.
While impressions aren’t necessarily an indicator for success, your impression share can help you out a bit more.
To calculate the impression share, divide your total impressions by the total number of impressions your campaign was eligible for. The higher your impression share, the better off your ad is doing.
5. Wasted Spend
Essentially, wasted spend refers to how much money you are wasting using a PPA that doesn’t result in conversions. When determining your PPC ad’s success, you’ll want to compare your conversion rate to the amount of money you are spending on the ad. If you’re noticing very minimal conversions for an ad you are paying quite a bit for, then you are increasing your wasted spend and killing your overall return on investment.
PPC Data Analysis is an Important Part of a Multi-Channel Approach
If these metrics and the idea of PPC data analysis is a bit overwhelming, then let the team at CadenceSEO help guide you. We believe that correct PPC data analysis is an integral part of a multi-channel digital marketing approach, and we will ensure your analysis gets done right.
If you’re curious about the benefits of PPC data analysis, then contact our team today.
