Everything You Need to Know About PPC Reports

PPC Reports: A Definition

A PPC report is a collection of the metrics your PPC campaigns have gathered. 

You can customise your reports to focus on the metrics that matter most to your particular campaign. 

The Purpose of a PPC Report

A PPC report helps you to measure the success of a campaign based on its initial goals.

PPC looks for those who click on your ad, right? Cool. But we know that not all clicks are created equal. Some people who click on your site are only vaguely interested in your product or service. Others are primed and ready to buy. 

In other words, not all clicks will result in sales. C’est la vie.

The great news is that PPC reports help you to understand important metrics and see which clicks do lead to sales, and what they mean for your business.

Who Uses PPC Reports and Why?

A PPC report is useful for digital marketing teams to help them understand and develop your brand’s positioning, needs, pain points, and interests, and to gauge whether a campaign is going down well.

It can also be used by the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team to help them understand the keywords your brand ranks best for.

The sales team, on the more business-y side of things, will use PPC reports to shape an overview of how your brand is faring. 

Why PPC Reporting Is Important

PPC reporting is important for a few reasons.

1. Measures Campaign Performance 

PPC is a quick way of targeting and driving traffic to your site. But, like all marketing endeavours, it’s not fool-proof.

Those pennies you spend on clicks can add up pretty quickly, so it’s good to keep an eye on what you’re getting out of it. A report is the optimal way to measure your campaign’s performance. 

2. Identifies Opportunities for Optimisation 

With this information at your fingertips, you can make clever decisions for your future campaigns. 

Information is power, guys. It helps you to understand your audiences, and what they respond best to. No more throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks. Your money makes meaningful change for your brand. Lovely stuff.

Key Metrics to Include in a PPC Report

Although you can customise your PPC reports to your heart’s content, here are some important metrics to bear in mind:

Impressions and Click-Through Rate

Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures how many of the people who see your ad (impressions) click on it. 

Obviously, with Pay-Per-Click advertising, there’s an emphasis on the click. How many clicks you get determines your ad’s success, as well as how much you pay. 

But as we know, not all clicks are sales. It’s great to track CTR if your main goal is sales, rather than awareness. See where people get to on your marketing funnel. 

CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition)

CPC refers to how much you spend per click. CPA, meanwhile, refers to how much it costs to get a customer to complete a desired action (or, to convert). 

Knowing this information can prevent you from over (or under!) spending on your PPC campaigns. It’s all about whether you’ve got a good Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate refers to how many of your initial ad-viewers complete the desired action. It might be a purchase, or it might be sharing their contact information. When you measure conversion rate, you ask the question, “are people doing the thing I wanted them to do?”

You can use this metric to understand:

1. What is the most efficient way of inspiring conversions?

2. Who is most likely to convert?

3. What sorts of ads promote the most conversions? 

4. Where do I put ads to reach my ideal audience?

Quality Score and Ad Relevance

A Quality Score will stack the quality of your ad against your competitors’. It measures on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 7-10 being optimal!). This determines where your ad sits in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and the priority it is given.

It’s always good to know this, but it’s especially helpful when you’re new to advertising and trying to work out what sort of messaging and targeting works best in your field of expertise.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) 

Are you getting your money’s worth? 

Calculating ROAS will help you to answer this question. It works on the idea that you spend money to make money. 

It tracks the amount of money you get in return for the money you spend. Boom. ROAS.

How Often Should You Create PPC Reports?

1. Daily

Nothing much changes overnight, so you can’t get a great overview of your metrics every single day. 

But you can look into some important figures. For example, it’s good to look at these things daily: 

• • Budget – checking in with your finances on a daily basis can help prevent overspending. On Google Ads, you even have the opportunity to set a daily budget. It can fluctuate day-to-day, depending on clicks. It also helps your ad remain competitive: if the budget is too low, your ad can’t compete.
  • Visibility – think about impressions and CTRs. If you have lots of impressions and low CTRs, your ad isn’t catching people’s attention, and it might be good to take it back to the drawing board quickly, to make the ad more efficient. Meanwhile, if you have a high CTR early-on, you’ll need to think about your budget and whether it can meet demand. 

2. Weekly

Weekly PPC reports help you to keep an eye on short-term issues, which you can fix, if needed. Weekly reports won’t tell you everything you need to know, business-wise. But they will give you a good idea of whether you’re heading in the right direction with your audience. 

Have a look at: 

• • Competition – PPC is an auction, so you need to understand your competition. Things do change pretty fast when it comes to competitor analysis, so it’s worth keeping an eye on your Quality Score and keyword rankings. Also, check in on whether competitors have made any changes or introduced new offers themselves. 
  • Conversions – Remember that conversions take time: looking too frequently (daily) can cause you to make rash decisions based on small amounts of data. But you still need to check in fairly regularly since, with PPC, if people are clicking and not converting, you’re spending money on weak leads. Weekly reports are therefore a manageable, stable way of ensuring your campaign is thriving. 

3. Monthly

Monthly reports provide a broader overview of your campaign’s performance. You can use this long-term data to make more solid conclusions. 

Keep your eye on: 

• • Outgoings and Revenue – How much have you spent so far? And how much have you earned as a result of your PPC ads? This will help you to understand if your campaign is effective, ROAS-wise, and whether you need to make any changes to improve the efficiency of your budgeting.
  • Keywords – Are you performing well for any particular keywords? Have any new keywords popped up in the last month that you could go to town on? Are your negative keywords pulling their weight? These are all important questions to think about when you have enough data collected to understand the trends.

Tailoring Frequency Based on Campaign Goals 

The frequency with which you generate PPC reports depends on your budget and your campaign’s goals. You can be more efficient with your reporting if you focus  on specific goals.

If your goal is to increase traffic, you’ll need to focus on CTR. This can be seen in short-term figures, so can be reported on more frequently. 

Meanwhile, if you’re looking to increase brand awareness, you’ll need to look at trends over a longer period of time to get a full understanding. Here, you should generate reports on a monthly basis.

How to Do a PPC Report

Welcome to PPC Reporting 101. Before you graduate, two decisions must be made. 

First, choose metrics based on your goals:

1. Awareness – Metrics include impressions, clicks, on-site behaviours
2. Conversions – Metrics include conversion rates, cost per lead, revenue generated
3. Traffic – Metrics include CTR

Then, choose a platform to gather data on. Here is some information to help you…

Reporting Features of Google Ads 

Google Ads is a favoured platform for this kind of thing. It offers:

• Granular data, including comparisons with your historical campaigns
• Granular conversion overviews 
• Automated report generation
• A deep dive into relevant search terms
• The chance to monitor experiments as if they were the real thing
• Competitor Analysis

Reporting Features of Google Looker (Data) Studio 

Google Looker is ideal for PPC newbies. It’s simple to use, and they give you reporting templates to help.

It’s completely free, and because it’s part of Google, it’s also pretty reliable.

The only downside with any Google tools is that, if you want to track paid ads on Meta (or any other platform/Search Engine), you’ll need to invest in some other tools too. 

Google is, understandably, Google-specific.

Third-Party Tools (e.g. SEMrush, HubSpot, Supermetrics)

Third-Party tools for PPC reporting can be a great place to start. Often, tools like SEMrush have a very specific SEO focus, and can show you Quality Scores and keyword priorities to help you thrive. 

Data on Google can be overwhelming; sites like this are designed to help you break it down.

There are costs associated with these platforms but many marketers find that these are completely worth it. Have a play around and see what works best for you. 

Soaring Free with PPC

PPC is a big ol’ topic. This is only the beginning. The tip of the iceberg. The first layer of an onion. You get the idea. 

There’s a lot more to discover.

But! Never fear! We’re here to help. We’ve got a KnowledgeBase that will cover the basics, and a fabulous team that can help with the rest!