5 PPC Metrics You Should Pay Attention to

Once your Pay-Per-Click campaign is up and running, your work is far from over, so make sure you do it right. To find out what worked, what failed, and what you can tweak to achieve better results in the future, you must track your results.

As anyone who has used Google Ads knows, there are a lot of PPC metrics at your disposal when it comes to measuring results. This is both good and bad.

It means that you have access to data on just about any metric you can imagine, but it also means that it is easy to get surrounded by numbers that are irrelevant to your business. So, what are the most important PPC metrics?

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Here is a list of metrics you should be paying attention to in order to determine whether your PPC campaign is successful.

Analyze Your PPC Metrics Before Getting Started

To determine the effectiveness of your online advertising, it is necessary to establish a baseline. Don't worry if you haven't taken this information into account when running your PPC ads or other online marketing campaigns. If you would like, you can still take a snapshot now to compare your results over the next few months.

We have outlined the most important baseline data to collect below:

• Site Traffic: What is the number of visitors your website receives each day, week, and month?
• Contacts/Leads: How many new contacts do you receive via forms, emails, or calls?
• Sales: How many sales do you have? You should know the sales figures for a product or service before running PPC ads for it.
• Email subscribers: How many subscribers do you have on your email list?
• Social media: What is your social media following/page-like count?

Email subscribers and social media followers may seem like secondary metrics depending on your PPC campaigns, but it's important to know if you are experiencing any brand lift from your search engine marketing campaign.

Most Important PPC Metrics to Measure

In order to determine the effectiveness of your SEM campaigns, it's time to identify the PPC metrics that matter.

     1. Click-through rate (CTR):

The CTR is an important metric to monitor when running a PPC ad. Your ad's total impressions are divided by the number of people who actually clicked on it.

It's hard to stay calm when you see that people are engaging with your advertisement, so you may see a high CTR and stop there. But don't stop there!

It is true that a high CTR indicates that you are appearing in relevant search results and that your copy is compelling. Nevertheless, a very large number of clicks can still result in no revenue if you do not pay attention to the actions that consumers take after they click.

Likewise, a low CTR does not indicate that your products, messaging, or offers are bad. You need to adjust your campaign for different keywords, or your ad copy may not be compelling enough to attract relevant consumers.

     2. Conversion rate:

For most businesses, what matters most is whether or not the people who clicked on your ad actually followed through and took your desired action. This is the conversion rate.

By calculating the number of people who clicked on your ad, you can calculate the percentage of people who followed through and did what you expected them to do. It might be signing up for your newsletter, or it might be scheduling an introductory call with your sales team. No matter what action you take, the conversion rate gives you an idea of how well your ad is performing.

You should also consider what a conversion looks like for your business or what action you want people to take on your website. If you own a restaurant, it is unlikely that you care how many people contact you via your website. It is important that you get them to come into your restaurant and order some food, so you may want to look at how many people viewed your menu and looked for your address on your website.

You need to investigate your conversion rate if you have a high CTR but a low conversion rate. Is the ad text not aligned with your desired action? Are you asking too much and scaring off potential customers?

The high conversion rate indicates that both your search engine marketing campaign and website are performing well.

     3. Cost per conversion:

You can also see your cost per conversion once you know your conversion rate. Your marketing budget and approach may need to be revised if the amount of money you spend acquiring new customers exceeds the amount of revenue you earn from each new customer.

If you want to boost your ROI, make sure you're using the negative keywords feature in Google Ads. By adding a negative keyword to your list, you tell Google not to show your ad for that phrase or word. Negative keywords allow you to focus your advertising budget on the most relevant terms and increase your ROI.

Also, you can utilize conversion-based optimization for search engine marketing ads (like LOCALiQ). Conversion-based optimization allows you to allocate your PPC budget to the keywords, placements, and search engines that generate the most conversions rather than just clicks, thereby reducing your cost-per-conversion.

     4. Page visits and time-on-site:

Conversions are great, but they are not everything. If they don't convert, what do they do instead? What percentage of visitors bounce right off of your site, versus how many spend several minutes, visit a variety of pages, and learn more about your business?

Missing the conversion may not be such a big deal if it's the latter. Spending quality time on your site indicates consumers are interested in what you're offering, and they are likely to return later to investigate further or make a purchase.

Google Analytics allows you to track visitors' behavior once they reach your site. By gaining insight into your PPC campaign's performance, you can add valuable color to the bigger picture.

Moreover, this is an excellent opportunity for retargeting. The visitor leaves your site without converting, sees a display ad for your business, and might just convert next time. Both of you win!

     5. Quality Score:

It is not known exactly what factors Google uses to determine an ad's Quality Score, but the Quality Score is vital to a successful Google Ads campaign. It determines where your ad appears on the search engine results page (SERP) and how much you pay per click.

You will pay less for each click if you have a higher Quality Score. A low-Quality Score, on the other hand, will penalize you with fewer impressions and a higher cost per click, both of which adversely impact ROI. A few tips can help boost your score, such as making sure your ad keywords are relevant to the content of your landing page, testing different ad copy, and regularly updating your list of negative keywords.

Final Thoughts

You may be tempted to get bogged down in the many PPC metrics available via the Google Ads management platform when measuring the results of your SEM efforts. If you track the right metrics, you only need a handful to get a good idea of how your campaign is performing.

For more guidance with tracking metrics and all other aspects of your PPC campaigns, contact Digital Authority Partners.