5 PPC Reporting Mistakes and How to Prevent Them

Pay-per-click (PPC) reporting is one of the most important parts of running a paid advertising campaign. Half of PPC is creating your campaign to reach leads that are more interested in your business. The other half is reporting those results to figure out how you can improve your campaign.

When you run your PPC campaign, you want to create a report that effectively details your campaign. It is a crucial part of your PPC campaign because it helps you understand your PPC campaign. Without proper PPC reporting, you may not fully grasp the results of your campaign and you won’t be able to optimize your campaign to drive better results.

There are a few common mistakes that companies make with their PPC reports. On this page, we’ll discuss five of those PPC reporting mistakes and how you can prevent them. Let’s get started!

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1. Neglecting to set campaign goals

When you run a PPC campaign, you need to set a goal. You need to think about what you want to achieve with your campaign. What results do you want to see?

Some companies neglect to set a goal for their campaign. They simply run their PPC campaign and wait to see results. When get they the results of the campaign, they don’t have any goals for comparison.

Other companies make the mistake of setting PPC goals that are too generic. They may say they want to increase their website traffic or clickthrough rate (CTR), but not set a numeric value on those results. It is extremely difficult to see if your campaign is successful if you don’t set tangible goals for your campaign.

How to prevent it: Set a goal before you run your campaign.

When you run any digital marketing campaign, you need to set a goal.

You need to know what you are trying to achieve with your campaign. It is important that you set a tangible goal before you run your PPC campaign. This should be a goal that you can measure.

Instead of saying you want to increase your CTR, say you want to increase your CTR by 1,000 percent. Set numeric values, so you can see if you reached that goal. When you create your PPC report, you’ll want to state that goal at the top of your report.

This will help you see if the results helped you achieve that goal.

2. Just presenting numbers

The biggest mistake companies make with PPC reporting is just presenting the numbers. When you run a PPC campaign, you’ll obtain an abundance of analytics about your campaign. It’s a lot of numbers that you must piece together.

Many companies make the mistake of just including the numbers on their PPC report. This may seem like it does the job, but it doesn’t. These numbers have no meaning without context.

If you put numbers on a sheet without any context or conclusions, they don’t make sense. Someone who is not familiar with your campaign would not be able to look at your PPC reporting and understand the numbers. You need to structure your PPC reports so that someone who has little knowledge of your campaign can understand the results.

How to fix it: Create context with your results.

When you share the analytics of your PPC report, be sure to present them with context.

By putting the numbers in context, you will help others understand the reports better. As you look at different results, think about the “so what?” aspect of these numbers. What do they indicate about your campaign?

Is something off with the results, and why is it off? Are there trends happening right now that cause a change in your ad’s performance? When you ask yourself questions about these numbers, it can help you put them into context better for your audience.

You want to indicate what these numbers mean and how it impacts your campaign. This will help you create a clearer PPC report.

3. Including too much data in your report

PPC offers you numerous analytics on the performance of your campaign. Many businesses make the mistake of presenting all this data in their PPC report. You don’t want to include too much data in your report, as it can create a report that is muddled and confusing.

Not all the data in your report is relevant for presentation. You need to focus on the data that is most important to your campaign.

How to fix it: Only include important data that pertains to your goal.

As stated previously, you are trying to achieve a goal with your PPC campaign. When you do your PPC reporting, you want to focus on analytics that pertains to that goal.

This will help you create a more clear and concise PPC report. You want to look at the analytics and pick out ones that pertain to your campaign goals. You can use these analytics to help shape your report and organize it.

It will help you create a report that is more focused on important analytics.

4. Forgetting to plan for the future

When you look at the analytics of your PPC report, you don’t want to just present the facts. These performance numbers are meant to help you create a better campaign. It is a common mistake to forget to plan for future campaigns.

How can you use this data to help you create a better campaign? What does this campaign indicate about the future? As you analyze your PPC results, you need to think about what the numbers mean and how that translates into change for the future.

How to fix it: Include a section about moving forward.

When you create your PPC report, you want to make sure you include a section about how you can use the data moving forward.

You want to state how the data will help you alter campaigns to create a PPC campaign that performs better. You can use the numbers to draw conclusions about your campaign and use those conclusions to improve your campaign in the future. If you see that you have a low CTR and low conversions, you can conclude that your CTR impacted your conversion rate.

You can then decide how you will improve your CTR in the future to help increase your conversion rate.

5. Neglecting to segment reports

As stated previously, PPC analytics provides your business with an abundance of information. You need to make sure that your information is presented in a format that makes sense to others. Neglecting to segment your reports has negative impacts on your campaign.

It makes it difficult for your audience to understand your report. You will also make it difficult to understand the small pictures that fit into the bigger picture. The most important part of PPC reporting is creating a report that is concise, clear, and easy to digest.

If you don’t segment your report, you will make it difficult for your audience to understand the full scope of your PPC report.

How to fix it: Segment your PPC reports.

You’ll want to organize your report to present the data clearly and make it easy for your audience to understand. This is another reason why you only want to include important analytics in your report. It will help you keep your PPC report more organized if you have less unnecessary data to make it appear messy.

You can segment your report by numerous topics. Some examples include segmenting by networks, devices, audiences, or hours of the week. You can break up your information into categories to help your audience understand the information better.

Start creating more effective PPC reports today

PPC reporting is an important part of running your PPC campaign. You need to make sure that you understand the results of your campaign and how you can use those results to create a more effective PPC campaign. A well-constructed PPC report will help you maximize your PPC campaign. Do you have questions about PPC?

Contact WebFX today to receive comprehensive marketing agency reports that help you optimize your PPC ads to boost your sales!