Top 10 most important KPIs for a PPC Campaign

What are these important KPIs? Correct business planning is key for any company that wants to be competitive in the market. In this sense, the KPIs of the marketing plan becomes essential, since they serve as a clear metric and at the same time, they inform of the situation, the state in which the company is and the environment in which it is existing. If you are not very familiar with the term, a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a unit of measurement that allows measuring and evaluating your business performance. It helps to see whether the objectives of a marketing campaign are being met, whether short, medium or long term.

For KPIs to be helpful they need to align with the objectives of your company or project. You need to pick KPIs that can get you closer to your business goals. If the two are not related then you are just going to confuse yourself.

Importance of having clear KPIs in your marketing plan

The ability to measure your actions to the maximum detail and to adjust strategies accordingly is one of the great advantages of online marketing versus traditional media. You can hardly analyze the results effectively, let alone make the relevant changes if you do not previously determine how those actions will be measured. A good measurement is a key to the health of your entire business and to moving forward with firm and convincing steps. These performance indicators are vital elements that provide quantitative, real and on time information on various aspects of your digital asset.

KPIs come in different shapes and sizes, and you need to look at different ones depending on what you are doing. You can't measure a paid advertising campaign that evaluates the monetization of a blog the same way you would measure the conversion of an online store or evaluate the effectiveness of lead capture of a landing page.

The world of digital marketing is so vast that you can measure absolutely everything! The key is to use the most appropriate KPI for each action. Here are 10 KPI's that are most important for a PPC campaign.

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The 10 most important KPIs for a PPC campaign

• Clicks: this KPI measures how many people clicked on your ad. Although clicks are an early indicator of a PPC campaign success, you can’t base the success of a campaign only with this one indicator.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): this is one of the basic KPIs to evaluate the performance of a campaign on any of the usual channels. The higher the percentage of clicks you get the greater the likelihood of generating more revenue.
• Click to Open Rate: This rate tells how many people who opened the ad clicked on a part of it (button, text link, image). It also reflects whether your message is eye-catching in content or design, and persuades users to take the desired action.
• Cost Per Click: CPC is a KPI model based entirely on the clicks that are made in the ad. The advertiser pays an amount ranging from a few cents to a few dollars, but only when the user clicks. Without a click, there is no payment, regardless of the number of impressions. The most recognized CPC system is Google Adwords, where advertisers suggest the price they want to pay per click and can set multiple parameters for their campaign, from the daily maximum budget to the criteria under which the ad will appear. On the other hand, publications have the system of Google Adsense to be able to serve Adwords messages, thus taking a percentage of Pay Per Click (PPC).
• Cost Per Action: the CPA, Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition, goes beyond a simple click, since it also requires a certain action on the part of the user when it reaches the page of the advertiser, whether they subscribe to a list, downloading software, purchase a product, etc. In this model, the advertiser only pays when this action occurs, although the CPA usually has a higher cost that can amount to several tens of dollars.
• Average Position: the average position is the location of the ads on the results page. An ad can be in top 1 position, where top means that it is above the search results. It could also be in the right hand in the first position, being able to be 1st real position, or 4th position if there are 3 ads placed in top position.
• Followers: Followers, likes or fans are the perfect indicators to know the reach level of your profile. While most followers are bought or obtained through sweepstakes and prizes in return, it is an indicator that can glimpse the virality thrust of what your social community is capable of.
• Subscribers: through the well-known RSS and Feed systems, users can access your content and receive it in their email, if they are subscribed or pay a subscription to access each of your new publications. These subscribers are positive and very pure since no user who is not really interested in your articles will choose to subscribe or pay for them.
• Return on Investment (ROI): ROI is the return on investment, one of the performance measures that are used to assess the effectiveness of an investment or to be able to compare the effectiveness of different investments. It is used because it is a very simple calculation and can be applied to different investments. It is a ratio expressed in a percentage that many companies use, and is taken into account in many marketing campaigns, to keep control of the investments in the different areas of the business. In the ROI many variables are taken into account, one of which is the time, since it is calculated based on the established term. To calculate the return on investment, you must divide the profit or return between the cost of the investment, giving rise to a percentage. Specifically ROI = (profit or return on investment-investment) / investment.
• Average Order Value (AOV):  AOV tells you how much customers are spending per purchase. This is influenced by factors like sales, promotions and customer loyalty.  A low AOV may be indicating a fault in the strategy, that could be that the advertiser is targeting the wrong keywords, or the message is not specific enough.

If you base your PPC performance on these 10 key indicators you can't go wrong. Now that you know what to focus on, go out and get some clicks, leads, and sales! Tell us what happened in the comments.