PPC Reporting Guide

PPC
PPC Reporting Guide
Article by Bisera Stankovska
Last Updated: April 27, 2023

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising offers one of the most efficient and affordable ways to reach your customers online. Research says paid ads can increase brand awareness by up to 80%.

If you’re just starting with PPC, the new world of PPC reporting can be overwhelming at first but don’t worry—with this guide on PPC reporting, you’ll soon be an expert in no time.

In this guide, we’ll cover PPC reporting and why it’s so important, how to make your custom report, and why it’s essential to include specific metrics in your report.

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What Is a PPC Reporting?

PPC reporting is a method of measuring the effectiveness of pay-per-click advertising campaigns. It is the process of tracking and analyzing your online advertising campaigns.

It helps you understand how your ads perform—and whether they're achieving their goals.

It also helps keep tabs on what other companies are paying for similar ads (which can be important when deciding whether or not to bid higher.)

You can track key metrics to determine if you need to make necessary adjustments to improve your results.

A PPC report is a tool that helps you analyze your campaign performance. Here are the most common types of reports:

  • Organic Scorecard: This shows how well each PPC keyword ranks in Google search results and includes data about your competitors' organic rankings.
  • Top Keywords Report: This shows you the top performing keywords for a particular time, which could help you find new opportunities to advertise on those terms.
  • Keyword Position Report (KPR): This shows how often each keyword appears on someone's ad copy when they click through from Google Search result pages or display ads. It also indicates whether there are any negative keywords associated with these terms.

Why Do PPC Reports Matter?

Studies show that 79% of businesses affirm that PPC is beneficial for their business. The data in your PPC reports are a gold mine as a business owner.

Data can help you decide what to do with your advertising budget, how much time and effort to put into different campaigns, and even how much money to spend on ads overall.

To get the most out of your Google AdWords campaigns, you need to have clear, actionable metrics available to you.

That way, you can correctly measure your success and make decisions on how to improve your results going forward.

Good reporting also allows you to optimize your campaigns for better results.

Here are the other benefits of a PPC report:

Understanding the data will help you improve your campaign.

Understanding how well or poorly each ad or keyword performs will allow for better performance analysis over time (and thus improve performance).

This can also help guide future changes in strategy by showing where specific changes don't work as well as others do.

For example, if one particular type of ad doesn't perform as expected but does better at certain times during the week/month/year (or whatever timeframe matters most).

Data helps manage campaigns.

The same principles apply here: knowing which keywords are performing well allows marketers who want their ads seen more often than others.

These are like those running paid search marketing campaigns—to allocate their budgets based on this information alone (or at least before they start spending money).

How To Build a Report on PPC Campaigns

When it comes to reporting on PPC agency campaigns, there are a few key elements that you need to keep in mind.

First and foremost, you'll want to use a management tool that has a reporting feature.

PPC tools are available in the form of free, paid and hybrid options. The best choice depends on your needs and budget.

If you want to track everything from ad copy to landing page performance and conversion goals, use a tool that offers all these features.

If you're just looking for basic reports on how much money your ads are generating (or losing), then try one of the following:

  • Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel metrics - These give you insight into how well each campaign is performing overall. They also allow you to see which keywords drive conversions most effectively compared with other terms in those campaigns.
  • AdWords Editor - This lets users create dynamic ads without coding knowledge.

You should also understand what type of reporting is available in this tool: will it show you the amount spent per keyword? The number of clicks? Or maybe both?

This will help give context around how successful your ad spending was overall and how much return on investment (ROI) there is from each campaign.

If all else fails—and let's face it, sometimes things go wrong—you can always turn back time by going through older reports.

Crafting a PPC Reporting Strategy That Makes Sense for Your Business

Define goals.

You need to know what you want to accomplish before building your PPC reporting strategy.

Do you want to see how much revenue is coming in from AdWords?

How many new leads are being generated from your ads?

Or maybe, just how much time has been spent on each campaign by employees across the organization so that they can make informed decisions about which ones need more attention and resources?

Set up a reporting strategy.

Once you've defined goals and set up a reporting schedule, it's time for some hard work:

  • Defining KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
  • Setting up processes for collecting those metrics
  • Creating an internal team responsible for analyzing them
  • Making sure all these things get done consistently

What Data Do I Need for a PPC Report?

  1. Campaign Overview
  2. Date Range
  3. Ad Targeting

1. Campaign Overview

It includes tracking your campaign's impressions, clicks, conversions, and CPC.

Impressions show the number of times your ad has been seen across Google or the Google Network (daily, weekly, monthly), which also serves as a great indicator that your ad is appealing and valuable to those who encounter it.

Click counts reveal where your audience tends to engage with your content-are they generally more attracted by text ads than image ads? Or do they prefer a website experience over being diverted elsewhere?

Conversions allow advertisers to learn whether their click-through results in people taking specific actions-like signing up for an email list.

And if they say no without qualifying further, there are two ways advertisers can reply: please review this, or I'm sorry. A simple message often gets folks back on board.

2. Date Range

Date ranges are important to pay attention to when you're reporting on your strategy.

Your frequency of running reports will adjust depending on what timeframe you want them to occur every month.

Ensure you include the date range in each report so that viewers know when this data applies to them.

3.  Ad Targeting

Breaking up your campaigns into different groups and sets will allow you to see what keywords or audiences worked well for you in the past.

This way, you can use those keywords again in the future when marketing similar products.

PPC Reporting Quick Checklist

  1. What is the campaign name?
  2. What is the ad group?
  3. What is the start date and end date of the campaign?
  4. How much is the cost of the campaign?
  5. How many impressions are being sent and received by your ad each day?
  6. How many clicks are being received?
  7. What is the click-through rate?
  8. What is the cost per click?
  9. Which keywords are driving the most traffic, and how often?
  10. What's the average click-through rate (CTR) on your ads, if any?
  11. How many people have downloaded or bought something after seeing an ad on Google or Facebook for that keyword phrase?

PPC Reporting Tips

A PPC reporting strategy should be thoughtfully put together with both challenges and opportunities.

PPC reporting is a great way to see how your marketing is working. It can help you identify the areas that need improvement and where you’re getting results.

A good PPC reporting strategy should be thoughtfully put together by understanding what type of data you want to collect and how it will be used.

For example, suppose you have an advertisement that runs on Google AdWords. In that case, several metrics are included in its report: clicks, impressions (the number of times someone saw your ad), cost per click (how much it costs per click), and ROI.

You might also want to see what keywords were used when people clicked through from another website or app; this information will give insight into which keywords are most effective at driving traffic toward your site or app listing page. Thus, leading to more visitors overall over time.

PPC Reporting: Takeaways

The best PPC campaigns have a data-driven approach. They use their best practices to maximize the impact of their advertising, and they ensure that they’re able to measure that impact to make better decisions going forward.

When creating your following PPC report, start by thinking about what you need from it, how much data you want it to contain, and how often (or infrequently) you’ll be producing reports on your campaign performance.

You can also think about whether other factors might affect how well an ad performs—for example, does the ad focus on a particular demographic?

If so, does this demographic respond well? Does this demographic react differently than others?

Don’t forget other metrics like click-through or conversion rates when crafting your PPC reporting strategy.

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