How To Set Achievable KPIs For PPC Campaigns

How not to set the bar too high or too low

Perhaps one of the most important factors of success when it comes to PPC campaigns is having achievable KPIs. If you set the bar too high, it’s highly likely that you’ll fall short of your goals and waste valuable budget and resources.

How not to set the bar too high or too low

In an ever-competitive and evolving digital environment, it’s important that you set clear KPIs for PPC campaigns to get the results you need. If you’re new to the world of PPC advertising or you haven’t updated your KPIs in some time, it can often be difficult to know where to start when it comes to setting these benchmarks.

Luckily, we are here to help! With years of experience in providing leading PPC management services to a variety of businesses, we’re able to provide valuable insight into how you can set achievable KPIs for your PPC campaigns. Keep on reading to find out more.

What are PPC KPIs?

In the world of PPC, KPIs (key performance indicators) refers to the campaign metrics you’ve identified as the most important. This is because they measure and represent the true success of your PPC campaigns. When accurately tied to the overall goals of your campaign, these KPIs can help you to understand what actions you need to take to reach your goals.

For example, if the goal of your PPC campaign is to drive a high volume of sign-ups via your website form, your KPI should be the sign-up conversion.

Why are PPC KPIs important?

KPIs for PPC campaigns are closely aligned with the overall goals of your campaign, therefore they’re important because they help to keep your goal in mind when making decisions that may impact your campaigns. Therefore, it’s important to know both the goals and the objectives of your campaign before you begin setting your KPIs.

Essentially, without clearly defined goals, you can’t take the necessary steps to measure success and provide value to your business.

Top tips for picking the right KPIs

Now that you know why they’re so important, it’s time to decide on the right KPIs for your PPC campaign. Below are four simple steps you can follow to help you choose the most appropriate KPIs:

Understand the goals of the campaign – for many, the ultimate goal will be to increase conversions and reduce your Cost per Acquisition. However, these aren’t the only goals you should be focusing on. For example, to increase conversions, you need to make sure you are capturing the available search demand. This translates into monitoring impression share (how often your ads are showing) and how effective your ads are in generating clicks (CTR)
For each goal, pick 1-2 KPIs – make sure you have 1-2 KPIs per goal that you can use to measure the success of that specific goal. If the numbers are coming in below what you expected, it might mean that your goal is currently unachievable or might need reviewing.
Define what “success” means to you – make sure that your digital teams understand what exactly success means to the business. You should be able to clearly define what this means to your business and use industry level benchmarks to evaluate your success.
Closely monitor your KPIs – this is incredibly important. By keeping a close eye on your KPIs, you can re-evaluate your chosen KPIs to match your goals or any recent changes in your industry.

To summarise, the KPIs you choose for your campaigns will work towards evaluating the success or failure of your campaigns. Therefore, they should be chosen carefully. This means identifying the objectives and goals of the campaigns before the KPIs are defined.

Remember the top 10 most important PPC KPIs you should be tracking

Now that you have better insight into how you should be defining your KPIs for PPC campaigns, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 most important PPC KPIs you should be tracking:

Clicks – every conversion starts with a click, hence why clicks are an early indicator of campaign success.
Click through rate (CTR) – another key metric for campaign performance. CTR is measured by dividing the total number of clicks your campaign got in the month (or period being reported) by its total impressions.
Quality score – this is a metric created by Google that tells them exactly how relevant your ad content is, based on other metrics such as CTR and performance variables.
Cost per click (CPC) – for the most part, advertisers know how much they can pay for an ad campaign because they will have a pre-determined budget. However, whilst you can specify a budget when setting up your campaign, it doesn’t mean this is what you will end up paying.
Cost per conversion/acquisition (CPA) – similar to CPC, CPA can be set when setting up the initial advertising campaign. Google determines the CPA based on your Quality Score.
Conversion rate (CVR) – you can measure your conversion rate in Google Ads by dividing the number of conversions the campaign received by the total clicks. This allows you to aim for conversions based on CPA goals.
Impression share (CPM) – an “impression” occurs when a user has seen your ad, regardless of whether they click on it or not. Impression share adds context to the reporting of your PPC campaigns.
Average position – this tells you which position your ad is shown in most of the time. Ads on Google Search Results often show at the very top of the page, above any organic results.
Budget attainment – budget attainment measures how closely you came to achieving your set budget. Many businesses do not consider budget attainment when it comes to measuring the success of their PPC campaigns, but it’s definitely something marketers need to think about.
Lifetime value – LTV is an indicator of overall account health and your PPC marketers’ abilities. Calculating the LTV is a very complex process and often needs the attention of experienced PPC management providers.

Do you need help with managing your PPC campaigns?

If you’re looking to outsource your PPC management to a leading PPC services provider, get in touch with Diginius today. Our expert team can help you to set achievable KPIs for your PPC campaigns and work closely with you to get you the results you need.