As marketers, our biggest challenge at the beginning of a PPC marketing campaign is to determine the best approach to define and measure the outcome for success.
The front-end process combines research, understanding who your audience is, obtaining quality competitive intelligence, and then developing campaigns which include installing tracking, A/B testing and deployment.
Setting expectations to deliver on clearly defined goals up-front is critical for the success of the campaign. Defining performance metrics and how they get measured and reported before the campaign launch, can make or break the long-term performance.
What PPC Metrics Matter?
In today’s data driven world, we have access to many digital metrics. It seems like it should be very straight forward to get the data we need, which it typically is, but the differentiator are the insights from the data that drive benefits and actions that will improve performance.
Ad Level Metrics – You Have to Start Somewhere
If you’re just starting a campaign, many marketers begin with ad level metrics that give insights into your campaign performance and website traffic, especially since over 60% of campaigns we review don’t have the right conversion tracking set-up.
At first glance in looking at ad level data for these three example campaigns, campaign B seems to drive the lowest traffic volume at the highest cost. It appears this campaign is driving the most expensive clicks compared to the other two, so based on this view we may consider pausing this campaign.
Response Level Metrics – Conversions Are The Next Step
Setting up conversion tracking can be complicated and tricky. If you are lucky enough to have this set-up correctly or work with an agency that sets conversion tracking up properly, you can start to see lead response data and look for any outliers.
There are a lot of conversion tracking options that should be defined and properly set-up. If you work with an agency they should define them prior to the PPC advertising campaign launch. Starter examples of meaningful conversions can include online purchases, form submissions, phone calls, downloads and clicks within the website using event tracking.
Looking at these three campaigns above, campaign C has the lowest cost per conversion with campaign A costing the most, but we still don’t have insights into which of these leads actually took an action and then moved down the funnel and became a customer.
Revenue Level Metrics – Maximize Performance & Eliminate Wasted Media Spend
Understanding which leads are resulting in revenue can help direct and maximize advertising media spend and sales performance. These metrics also help us prove the value of marketing.
There are also a lot of things that impact a lead that turns into a customer like the quality of the CRM data that is entered and making sure attribution is factored in all along the customer journey. It can also get even more complicated with offline purchases and longer complex sales cycles, compared to e-commerce, which requires further collaboration and tracking efforts.
Looking at the example below, we factored in all additional costs which included media spend plus the agency monthly management fee, and you can see that campaign B is the clear winner, generating more sales at a lower CPA (cost-per-acquisition) with the most revenue and the highest marketing ROI.
Tracking PPC ROI metrics can give valuable insights to the bottom line impact from directly trackable leads. Many times, a well implemented PPC advertising strategy across multiple platforms like Google, Bing and Facebook can also create a lift in response from other channels like organic or direct, so assigning attribution to all touch points from the lead to customer journey can give the best overview of proving the value of marketing efforts over time.
Taking your PPC advertising campaigns to the next level is very possible if you have the right data to gain the right insights to eliminate waste and provide the maximum return on your online advertising investments.
If you are struggling with tracking the right ROI metrics for PPC advertising, you’re not alone, it’s a complex process!
If you need help, we recommend requesting more information about our PPC Conversion Tracking Audit or starting a conversation with us here. Our team of experts at Creative Website Marketing are happy to help and to provide access to the data you need to maximize your advertising investment.
Creative Website Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Nashville, TN, helping businesses throughout the country execute strategic brand awareness + lead generation efforts.
