There's no way of knowing if you do well without tracking your progress with reports. Our friends from the report-building tool share their pieces of advice on PPC reports.
In this post, Mile Živković from Whatagraph will show how to make Pay per click PPC reports better. Whatagraph is the leading marketing reporting tool for agencies and marketers, so you can trust Mile’s expertise.
PPC is one of the most common services offered by marketing agencies to clients in various industries. And it’s not hard to see why it’s so popular - this tactic gives immediate results and clients can see if you’re doing a good job or not.
Or can they? If you want your clients to see the value of your PPC efforts, you need to create compelling PPC reports. Today, we compiled some of the best tips on PPC reporting, gathered from thousands of reports created on our platform.
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1. Use a reporting tool for live and accurate data
Creating a PPC report the old-school way is just not something that people do anymore. Manually copying and pasting PPC campaign data is not only time-consuming but also opens up opportunities for errors. And one mistake here can make a massive impact on how your client perceives your work.
You should connect your PPC account data (Adwords, Bing ads, or other platforms you’re using) to a marketing report tool and watch as your reports get populated with fresh data every time you go and create a report. It saves time and money and your results are more accurate.
2. Create live dashboards for your clients
Within your favorite reporting tool, you’re going to have options to send reports to clients at pre-determined intervals. Once a week, month, quarter, or something else. It’s convenient because you just have to connect the tools and the reports go out on their own.
However, you’ve probably had situations before when a client sent you emails asking about the latest campaign performance. And then someone in your team has to dig for the data, send an email or hop on a call to explain your decisions.
Instead, use your reporting tool to create a live dashboard where clients can see an overview of their campaigns at any point in time. All you need to do is send them a link to their live dashboard and your hard work is halfway done.
3. Include a performance breakdown against your KPIs
Once you take on a new client, you probably agree on a set of KPIs for the work you’re going to deliver. This can include your typical campaign costs, as well as the return on ad spend, and ultimately, the revenue you make for the client.
Many agencies simply send a report with a bunch of numbers, expecting the client to understand what they mean. Don’t let your client scratch their head - explain what each of your results means and contrast it against your main campaign KPIs.
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Are you charging extra money for your PPC reports? If not, now is a good time to start thinking about it. We recently did some research and asked more than 160 different agencies around the world about the reports they send to their clients.
A good number of them said that they charge for reports, whether it’s an add-on to their services or individually, per report.
The average client expects to pay anywhere from $50-100 for a marketing report, so calculate this into your potential earnings. This is a nice way to get back some of the investments made in your marketing reporting tool. Moreover, it makes the client perceive the report as more valuable rather than a freebie that they get at the end of each week or month.
5. Add more insights
If a client is hiring you to do PPC tricks for them, there’s a pretty good chance that they are far from a PPC expert. So, the content of your reports should give them some insights to help them better understand what you do.
In the research that we did, almost 43% of all clients said that they are unhappy with their reports. The reasons are many, but clients in general are not satisfied with the level of insights they get from their reports. To make your reports better, consider some of the following:
Explain the clients’ results against industry metrics (e.g. click-through rate for the average company in the software industry)
Explain what each metric means in layman's terms (you can only do this one and save it as a template for later use)
Provide suggestions for the next steps that you can take (to improve your results, for example)
Usually, creating these extra insights won’t take too much additional time per report since the data aggregation is already automated. However, it makes for a massive improvement in how your clients perceive your reports.
Wrapping up
A PPC report isn’t something you should take for granted. When done right, the report does more than inform your client about the progress of your campaigns. It shows them that they are in the right hands, that they’re dealing with a professional, and that they can confidently wait on your next report because you’re delivering the kind of results they will love.
And since you’re already automating the way you create your reports, it’s worth spending a bit of extra time to make them more special.
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