PPC Best Practices: Stats Only Scratch the Surface

Stats Only Scratch the Surface: Digging Deeper for Meaningful PPC Data Insights

Stats Only Scratch the Surface: Digging Deeper for Meaningful PPC Data Insights

Want to know a secret that most PPC companies won’t tell you? Creating Google Ads is easy. Anyone can start a Google Ad (or AdWords Express) Account and launch a campaign in just a matter of hours. But we don’t withhold that information to trick you into working with us. It’s for your own good.

While creating Google Ads is easy, so is spending a lot of money on them with little to show for it. Most business owners we’ve worked with who previously handled their own Google Ads have known they were getting clicks on their ads but weren’t sure how that translated to building their business. Even those with engaging ad copy, strong keyword lists, and excellent landing pages struggled to tell how well, or even if, their Google Ads were working.

Metrics Matter

When we take over a Google Ad account, we don’t start with the ads. Before any campaigns are created, we set up the account to give us as much data as possible, beginning with Google Analytics to ensure that the accounts are properly linked, goals are set up, and the goals have been imported into the Google Ad Account to track conversions. We then set up call tracking to determine who’s calling the business from their website and how those callers got to the website.

But all the data in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to interpret it. The old adage “it’s all Greek to me” resonated with a lot of our clients when they reviewed the metrics in their account. But when we came onboard as translators they could see for the first time how a click became a lead.

Digging Deeper

Basic reporting is essential for giving you a snapshot of how your ads are performing, but to gain deeper insight you must dig below the surface. Recently we were reviewing the call tracking software for one of our clients and saw that a significant amount of people who called the store after clicking on a Google ad took between 1 week and 1 month to call after having clicked the ad. Looking beyond the simple monthly call volume in this way allowed us to determine that our ads are driving serious potential customers. They take time to consider their options and then they take action. We can also infer here that the customers may have been shopping around and returned to our client after reviewing their other options. Without drilling down further into the data, we never would have known that our ads led to this consideration.

Rethink Reporting

We challenging you to rethink the way you look at your PPC reporting. If you’re only measuring clicks, or even conversions, it’s time to dig deeper. Need help digging? Contact us to schedule a consultation with one of our PPC Specialists today!

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