Pay-Per-Click Advertising

 

Most of us look at paid search reports oftentimes with a mix of reluctance and necessity. Why? Well, while we know that we need to showcase results to clients, you might be wondering why you have to create a report to fulfill this need.

Much of this systems from the way that we’ve always done reports – often in Excel documents by manually typing in results, pasting screenshots, or downloading and uploading certain data. It’s labor intensive and, frankly, often doesn’t provide a lot of actionable insights. But what if there was a way to create better ppc reports for clients and make the creation of them easier on us?

In this article we’ll outline a five-step framework that PPC agency marketers can use to create better client reports. But before we dive any further into how you should be setting up your reports, it’s worth reviewing some data.

Steps For Agencies To Create Better PPC Reports For Clients

You know you have to, but what really is the true goal of creating paid search reports? The number one, of course, is being able to showcase to your stakeholders that what you’re doing is actually effective. If you can’t showcase that what you’ve done has even had an impact, then you might as well not be doing anything at all.

But beyond that, PPC reports provide you an opportunity to build rapport with clients. Even if something isn’t working at the moment, you can explain what how you’re planning to address it and steps you’ve taken to improve the numbers in the report. This shows your client that you’ve taken the initiative and are willing to try other tactics to get the results that you want with your PPC marketing.

Keep these goals in mind when you start framing your paid search reports. It will help give them focus and ensure that you can make your clients happy. Now, it’s on to actually building them.

Define what constitutes a good PPC report

Before you ever start filling out numbers, really think about what you would want to see in a report if you were a client. An insightful report will have a number of items. These include all of the following

Goals & objectives

Every client that you work with is bound to have goals and objectives. And, if they don’t, then this is something that you should discuss long before launching anything. But most will want something – increased number of leads, more sales, higher brand penetration. Get to the bottom of these long before you start your campaign. Then, tailor your reports around these objectives. The report should identify opportunities that have led to, say, a higher number of product sales. And, it should be front and center on the report.

Wins

Be sure to highlight what has worked during the last reporting period. Your client will be happy to see that the money that was entrusted to you is being well-spent, and you can demonstrate your effectiveness.

Losses

No matter how skilled we are, there are bound to be down numbers. Don’t try to hide these. You’ll only make your client not trust you when the truth comes out, and it gives you a chance to offer opportunities to address them.

Opportunities

Here’s where you can talk about what’s not working and find an alternative solution that might fix it. The more that you can show that you’re working hard to find a better revenue, the more your client will allow you to keep running the campaign.

Challenges

There are always some items that don’t seem fixable. For example, if you keep running out of budget and aren’t making the numbers, then you will need to go back to your clients and try to get them to raise the budget. Laying out with what you need help will ensure that items get addressed sooner before they’re critical.

Next steps

You were hired to be the expert so you need to show your client that you’re always thinking several steps ahead. In this section, you can propose new campaigns, ad groups, etc. to try and meet the goals.

Aggregate numbers

While you should definitely have a breakdown of raw data in the report, you should also have aggregate numbers for the reporting period. You might be running several different campaigns on various platforms, but it’s worth rolling up these numbers to showcase the bigger picture – as well as how each campaign is supporting another. Roll-up data can be done using third-party software reporting tools like Super metrics.