Why Setting Your KPIs for PPC Campaign is a Successful Key Step

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a tool through which a company can measure its progress. Now, the savviest marketers use pay-per-click (PPC) marketing to grab the best return for their marketing outlay, and KPIs happen to be an essential component of a successful PPC campaign. To get the intel on why you need these KPIs on board for a successful PPC campaign, SMART KPIs, Google Analytics, and how you can use KPIs to grease the wheels of your PPC marketing success, keep reading.

In all fairness, you can have a PPC campaign without the KPIs, but that campaign is unlikely to be a successful campaign. Even if it happens to be successful, accidentally, you won’t know it because, without those KPIs, you can’t measure your actual performance against your business objectives.

What Actually Makes KPIs So Important to a PPC Campaign?

KPIs are the performance targets that you set up before you start scheming with your marketing team to develop a PPC campaign. So each PPC Campaign KPI lets you know and your marketing team know what you want to achieve with your PPC campaign in relation to your business.
A PPC campaign without KPIs will not be structured to achieve your business goals. A KPI is a link between a business goal and the desired improvement in performance that is necessary to achieve that goal. So to achieve a business outcome, you need a KPI that measures your progress toward that outcome and a PPC campaign that is structured to achieve the desired outcome. If you do not set any KPIs for your PPC campaign, the campaign will lack relevance.
An irrelevant PPC campaign is a complete waste of money as it will not improve performance or enable the achievement of business objectives.
You have the potential to achieve your business objectives with a PPC campaign. But without setting up your KPIs, you will not clarify what your PPC campaign must achieve in relation to organisational performance to achieve these business goals.
Each KPI should relate to a critically important part of your company in which company performance needs to be improved, such as sales. So a KPI that you set up now will enable you to measure your performance in a key area, against this performance target, in the future.
Achieving each PPC Campaign KPI will enable you to improve organisational performance in an important area that impacts your company’s future prospects.
KPIs need to be shared with stakeholders. So setting up KPIs is a method in which you can keep all your stakeholders informed and engaged as you progress toward achieving your business goals.

What Makes a KPI a SMART KPI?

S: The KPI is specific to an important business process, such as sales.
M: The KPI is measurable, so it has a performance target that can be measured, such as a 15% increase in sales.
A: The KPI is attainable, so your company has the resources in terms of marketing budget, personnel, and expertise to achieve the desired increase in performance.
R: The KPI is relevant to the unique needs of your company.
T: The KPI is time-bound, so it needs to be achieved within a specific period.

Is Google Analytics Relevant to KPIs in a PPC Campaign?

Google Analytics is a free tool that enables you to gather data on your website traffic. The website that you have developed for your product or service offering is likely to be a key location for all digital traffic.
Typically, a PPC campaign is deployed to motivate a target market or several target markets toward specific actions such as becoming more loyal and/or increasing purchases. So an effective PPC campaign that actually engages a company’s target consumers will result in significant changes in that company’s website traffic. Google Analytics is important to KPIs in a PPC campaign because it gathers data on website traffic.
To develop an effective PPC campaign, Google Analytics should be used during the market segmentation stage to figure out the market that you need to target with your PPC campaign.
In PPC marketing, Google Analytics is a great tool for data collection on the impact that your PPC campaign has on your performance.
Google Analytics provides you with valuable data on the people who visit your website and their behavior. For example, this tool informs you about the number of site visitors, the sources of website traffic, the bounce rate of site visitors, the time that visitors spend on your website, the conversion rate, visitor interactions with the website, transaction values, and the geographic details of your site visitors.
As Google Analytics provides you with an economical and effective way to learn about your website traffic, you can monitor many of the KPIs that you develop for your PPC campaign using this tool. For instance, you can set a Google Analytics goal to monitor a KPI that targets a 15% increase in the conversion rate of site visitors who make a purchase through the website in the first quarter. Alternatively, you can use the keywords traffic report from Google Analytics to monitor a KPI that targets a specific increase in online visibility.
Keep in mind that although Google Analytics is an excellent tool that you can use to learn about your progress toward achieving your KPIs, it is not the only tool that you need to evaluate your KPIs. In addition to Google Analytics, there are other tools that you can use to evaluate your KPIs in a PPC campaign. Facebook Insights is another free tool that enables you to gather data on the impact that your PPC campaign has on the digital traffic on your social media page. You should also use traditional accounting tools to gather data on changes in revenue. Using the services of a market monitoring company, which tracks brand mentions across multiple digital channels, is another way to understand the impact that your PPC campaign has on your performance in the market.
Essentially, Google Analytics provides you with important raw data. You should use the raw data that is provided by Google Analytics and other relevant tools to evaluate your progress toward the short term KPIs and long term KPIs that you set up for your PPC campaign.

3 Tips on Making Your PPC Campaign a Success with KPIs

Align your PPC campaign with your KPIs: Ensure that all your KPIs reflect your business goals. Then structure your PPC campaign to achieve your KPIs. The components of a PPC campaign such as the types of PPC tools that you choose, the third-party websites that the PPC content is deployed, and the design of the PPC campaign must be geared to achieve the specific performance targets that are highlighted in the KPIs.
Set short term KPIs for each of your long term KPIs: Setting short term KPIs for KPIs that relate to long periods, such as the first quarter or a fiscal year, makes sense as each short term KPI allows you to assess your progress. This gives you the opportunity to make changes to your PPC campaign if changes are necessary to achieve your long term KPIs. For example, if your long term KPI is to use your PPC campaign to achieve a 20% increase in sales by the first quarter, you need to set up weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly KPIs to achieve this long term KPI.
Reevaluate each of your KPIs in relation to any changes in business operations regularly: A successful PPC campaign is one that is suited to the tactical and strategic direction of its company. Monitoring the KPIs that you set up for your PPC campaign on a bi-weekly or monthly basis allows you to make sure that your PPC campaign reflects any tactical or strategic changes that occur in your company. For instance, you may adopt a strategy that focuses on environmentalism after you develop your PPC campaign. In this scenario, if you do not review the KPIs that you set up for your PPC campaign regularly in relation to the changes in your company, you will not be able to modify the PPC campaign to address this new strategic direction.

So you can use KPIs to achieve your business objectives by structuring your PPC campaign to achieve key performance targets. Setting KPIs enables you to clarify what you want to achieve, develop a relevant PPC campaign, track your progress, improve the efficiency of your PPC campaign, and engage your stakeholders in your progress.

Some businesses believe that setting KPIs that are recognised measures of performance in their industry is sufficient to achieve success in PPC marketing. But this is a mistake that rookies make. Each of your PPC Campaign KPIs needs to be tailored to the business objectives and strategic direction of your company, instead of the goals and strategies of other companies in your industry.

To avoid setting irrelevant KPIs, always set SMART KPIs. Once you identify your KPIs, you can make sure that your PPC campaign stays relevant by using Google Analytics with other tools such as Facebook Insights, traditional accounting tools, and market monitoring to regularly evaluate your progress. In a nutshell, if you’re planning a PPC campaign, you definitely need those KPIs on board to make it a success.