One reason so many brands integrate PPC into their marketing strategy is the wealth of data it yields. However, this information is only beneficial if you know which metrics deliver the greatest insights, and if you use the information to manage your campaigns – and, in fact, your brand – better in the future. These are some of the stats you should pay close attention to and why.
Click-Through Rate
Your PPC click-through rate (CTR) is a calculation: you divide how many people saw your post or advert by how many people went on to click on it. It gives you a gauge of how well each piece of marketing activity is performing and enables you to not only test headlines, images, and color palettes but also benchmark against industry performance.
Cost Per Click
The cost per click (CPC) is how much you paid for your placement divided by how many clicks the placement generated. Within your strategy, you may choose to have a mix of placements with both a low and high CPC as higher doesn’t necessarily mean it performed less well. A media buy that has increased brand awareness as its goal will have a much higher CPC than one purely driving direct response, so take this into consideration.
Conversion Rate
You can run an activity for any number of reasons, including generating sales, encouraging email sign-up, or even to promote competition. Regardless of what you’re measuring, the conversion rate will calculate how many people clicked on your activity and then went on to do the action you desired.
Quality Score
Search engines determine your quality score. They run an algorithm against your advert and rank it in terms of relevancy, the expected click-through rate, and the user’s landing page experience. The higher your quality score, the lower your advertising prices and the better your advert placements will be.
Return on Investment
Your return on investment (ROI) is how much revenue your overall campaign brought in compared to how much you spent on it. With a direct response campaign, you should only ever hope to see positive results, with your campaign ideally bringing in significantly more than you spent on it. Brand advertising, on the other hand, may not always yield a positive ROI, as the purpose is more about brand building than driving sales.
The more attention you pay to your PPC, the more you’ll get out of it. Learn how to interpret the data and translate it into insights and actions that will see your brand soar.
