How Successful are Your Pay-Per-Click Campaigns (and How Do You Know)?

There are several ways to measure the success of a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. While many people are looking for a single, absolutely definitive metric, unfortunately, this isn’t usually possible.

The truth is, there are many ways to measure PPC campaign success – and the one (or ones) that most accurately provide the answer will depend on your business and what you are trying to achieve. To further complicate things, these measures of success are likely to change from campaign to campaign.

At GoLeads, we have identified six of the most significant ways to measure PPC success. What follows are those six ways, along with a brief explanation.

1. Impressions. How many people have seen your advertisement? This number is critical to determine which keyword phrases work best.
2. Cost-Per-Click (CPC). How much money is spent to get a single click? This amount will depend on your industry, but analyzing the CPC for keyword and keyword phrases will tell you how much you need to spend to get a click on your site.
3. Click-Through-Rate. This number is reached by taking the number of clicks your campaign generated and dividing it by the impressions to determine how many people saw your ad and then clicked on it. 
4. Conversions. What was the desired outcome, and did you achieve it? Did you want to obtain email addresses? Have people downloaded a whitepaper? Whatever your goal, conversions tell you whether you got what you wanted.
5. Conversion Rate. This number helps to judge the optimization of your PPC campaign or landing page. It also can help you see where you are losing potential customers. The conversion rate is determined by taking the number of conversions and dividing it by the number of clicks generated, letting you know how many people clicked on your ad and then went on to convert.
6. Cost-Per-Conversion. How much did it take for you to get a single conversion? Divide the number of conversions by the amount of money you invested in your PPC campaign to find out.

PPC campaigns can be complex but also highly effective. This is especially true when more and more people are doing business online due to the pandemic. Make sure to get the results you desire by compiling and analyzing campaign data every step of the way.