What is PPC marketing? Like a wood-dye product from the Ronseal brand, “it does exactly what it says on the tin” – well, if PPC advertising actually came in a tin, which it doesn’t. The acronym means ‘pay per click’, so you pay for every click on PPC ads you run.
Not so obvious, though, are many of the metrics by which a PPC campaign’s success is judged – and how you can get your numbers on these metrics moving in the right direction. So, let’s have a look at…
Impressions
A PPC ad garners an ‘impression’ whenever someone views it, whether or not they proceed to click on it. Unlike with clicks, you don’t usually have to pay to amass impressions for PPC ads.
However, if you find that yours spur relatively few clicks compared to the number of impressions, you could essentially be leaving money on the table – money you could more easily pick up simply by improving your advertising copy to more successfully tempt people into clicking the ad.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Whatever PPC platform you use, it will automatically calculate the CTR for you – enabling you to easily see it at a glance as and when you prefer. Basically, the CTR represents – as a percentage – how successfully your PPC advertising is converting impressions into clicks.
As we alluded to earlier, crafting more enticing text for your PPC ads could improve your CTR. We have digital copywriters capable of penning succinct but effective marketing messages for you.
Conversion rate (CVR)
This is similar to the CTR, except that it assesses how often your clicks lead to someone actually buying from your company – which, of course, is the end goal. This ratio, too, will be displayed as a percentage.
It’s hard to understate the importance of your CVR, as a poor one means you are paying for clicks that aren’t bringing in enough money to make up for this financial outlay. If it keeps happening, it’s possible that you aren’t making it clear enough on your site what people should do after clicking through to it.
Cost per click (CPC)
On average, how much do you pay for each click your PPC ads get? You can find out by simply referring to the CPC metric. However, it really goes deeper than that, as your PPC platform will let you see what CPC you incur from, say, a specific keyword, ad or advertising campaign.
When you contact our digital marketing team, you can learn clever ways of refining your PPC advertising strategy and consequently reining in how much you generally need to spend for each click.
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
This is the same kind of thing as CPC, except with conversions. So, this metric allows you to see how many conversions you are getting in relation to your overall spend.
If you want to lower your CPA, you could initially just lower your budget to push your spending down. You could also investigate whether any particular keywords you use are excessively inflating your CPA.
