Best Practices in PPC Reporting

Best Practices in PPC Reporting Advanced Strategies to Maximize Efficiency and Results A Search Marketing Now ebook

Introduction Success in paid search, or PPC advertising, depends largely on the ability to quickly and efficiently gather and analyze data, then turn that data into actionable strategies that improve account performance. But as technology has made data gathering easier, online marketers have become overloaded -- with data and with data that has become meaningless without insightful analysis. Good PPC reporting is time consuming; daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly reports demand continuity and scalability in order to produce results and grow bottom lines. Because of the pressure to serve more clients with existing staff, many agencies either don t provide reports or provide reports that are long on data and short on insight. After all, data in and of itself is not useful. Interpreting what data means so that brand marketers can make better business decisions is what creates value. Great reporting does the following: Creates measurability. Digital marketing is trackable and accountable. Tracks performance. Metrics and measurability show context and growth. Enables Data Analysis. Data analysis is a point of connection with teams, peers, reports and clients. Builds relationships. Skilled reporting opens the door to longer-term planning and increases the value of the agency to the lives of clients and their enterprises. This report is divided into three parts: Part I presents seven best practices in PPC reporting to help SEM agency executives increase their analytic skills and reporting effectiveness; Part II offers some tips for improving your Excel skills, and Part III provides a case study of the Adwords Keyword Report that explains how to optimize report data to improve client account performance. The following Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Now people made valuable contributions to this report: Kendall Allen, MKTG; Josh Dreller, Fuor Digital; Andrea Harris, marketing director, Embassy Suites; Brad Geddes, founder, bgtheory; Mona Elesseily, director of marketing strategy, Page Zero Media; and George Michie, co-founder and principal, Rimm-Kaufman Group. Thanks also to Matt Van Wagner, president, Find Me Faster and Karen Burka, for their editing of this report. 1 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

Best Practices in PPC Reporting: Part I Best Practices in PPC Reporting #1: Establish Reporting Strategies Upfront Perhaps the most critical factor in PPC reporting success is to have a plan that clearly defines the reporting strategy, format, frequency, tracking mechanisms, metrics, accountability and the communication chain of command. The goal is to better align your team s efforts with the clients objectives. Create a timetable for each major action item in your plan and associated task that is needed. It s important to think everything through before you start since some tasks will influence others and you don t want to create inefficiencies or redundancy. There are always going to be things you cannot plan for, but having a solid plan is a must. The next step is to manage client expectations. Whether this is a new account or one that you ve won from another agency, you are going to make changes that will affect account performance. Be sure to let your client contact know what you re doing every step of the way. Strive for consistent but progressive quality, and set up the account structure to give you enough levers to control your success. Make sure everyone is in agreement on the strategy, timetable, and action items involved. Don't overlook some of the nitty-gritty details, from exactly who needs to be included on client e-mails to whether there are preferred templates or data formats. Best Practices in PPC Reporting #2: Organize Staff for Success An honest assessment of skill sets will allow you to more clearly define responsibilities around planning, campaign management, data compilation, report assembly and more. Even if you are operating shorthanded, a few adjustments to roles and team engagement models will encourage collaboration and help you better manage workload and flow. Exhausted analysis shows: it's easier to keep your analysis and reporting fresh by enabling creative thinking. Regardless of role, motivate each staffer involved in the client engagement to think strategically and think big, particularly those who are scoping the opportunity, setting the account framework, leading the analysis and drafting the reports. Today s SEM tool set is sophisticated enough that you can worry less about having total 'quant' types on staff and opt for well-rounded thinkers who will ask 'what if' and take things to the next level. In addition to your own staff, talk with your strategic account representatives and vertical experts at the search engines and third-party tool providers. They typically can provide additional layers of value - from industry contacts or recent market research -- that can give you greater market context and boost the caliber of your reporting. Best Practices in PPC Reporting #3: Create Transparency Having an open-door policy with clients fosters a culture of conversation where clients feel free to ask questions about your reporting and analysis and you feel more confident about your answers. In the initial stages of a PPC client relationship, you ll need to convince new clients that you are equipped to significantly improve account performance. Try to secure some minor wins quickly. For example, tweak ad copy to show meaningful account improvements that demonstrates your expertise. Frequent contact is also important; aim for at least one monthly face-to-face meeting or conference call. 2 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

As time goes on, you want to show additional and consistent improvements in both reporting and performance. This includes accounting for your work on a regular basis with insightful reporting, interim commentary and asking the right questions to get more feedback that you need to improve the campaigns. Client trust increases through demonstrated expertise, clear and open communication, and tangible, bottom-line results. Use your project management skills to further solidify trust and gain buy-in for your account plans. It may be helpful to roll out PPC initiatives in stages to allow you to tweak often and add new ad groups and campaigns as needed. Remember that the relationship is two-way. Don't be afraid to ask for feedback from the client or suggest testing new variable if you think it will improve the overall campaign. Best Practices in PPC Reporting #4: Stop Presenting Data; Start Analyzing It Too many SEM professionals mistake Excel keyword dumps for data, data for analysis and rote analysis for brilliant insight. Reporting on traffic volume, for example, is not a metric unless you have previously set certain expectations, or were running a test, or evaluating a particular shift. Similarly, raw budget figures are not helpful unless presented as a comparison, or in response to certain goals or expectations, or as an allocation over time. Look for trends and variations in the data that will provide a meaningful narrative for your report. Analysis is critical for reporting performance, identifying trouble spots and finding your next great opportunity. In fact, we d expect SEM professionals to spend 20 percent or more of their time reporting and analyzing data. If you re spending less than 20 percent of your time reporting and analyzing search data, you are probably missing key information about your accounts. Data analysis doesn t have to be complicated and unintelligible. Use plain English to analyze data and initiate a conversation with your clients. One of the most meaningful areas of analysis is the relationship between the website, keywords and ad-creatives. Your narrative on how these elements are interacting can provide your client with valuable insight into consumer demand that can guide their strategic merchandising decisions and more. Provide context to the narrative within a report, whether it's an historic perspective, an emergent trend, or industry benchmark. Don't make the mistake of assuming that the report or dataset will speak for itself. When in doubt, point it out. Get Your Hands Dirty Don t ever consider yourself above data analysis. Even if you rely on other teams or colleagues to provide certain data, putting together reports and doing the analysis yourself will help you better understand the data. It s hard not to know the numbers when you re the one putting them together. Based on your knowledge of search, you also may be better positioned to see certain trends in the data. As a bonus, doing your own analysis will give you a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses, power and limitations of your reporting tools and enable you to provide even deeper insights into the usefulness of your reports. Best Practices in PPC Reporting #5: Go Granular; Dig Deep Give a PPC campaign room and time to perform and you will have more data available to analyze. In fact, the more granular your approach, the better. Look at budget distribution; compare KPIs for every search engine in which you re advertising; contrast content vs. search vs. site placement; examine the co-variation of two metrics; analyze performance by time of day and day of the week; and create summary tables for various time periods. Add one enhancement to your report each time to show a deepening of the data used in your analysis. In cases where you ve won an existing PPC account, going granular means pulling up historical data such as: The age of the account. Average daily, weekly and monthly spending levels. Top, high-volume keywords. Top campaigns and ad groups. CPCs and average positions of the top account elements. Past use of conversion tracking, Google Analytics, cost per conversion settings or position rules. 3 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

Best Practices in PPC Reporting #6: Establish the Right Report Frequency For paid search campaigns, we recommend reporting key metrics at least weekly for each search engine in which you advertise. PPC metrics can change quickly as a result of changes in the search engine networks, your competitors ad strategies and a host of other factors. When there s a sudden change in PPC cost and/or ROI, it needs to be addressed quickly. Daily reporting makes sense if the numbers that you re reporting are very large. Daily analysis can also help you understand search traffic patterns by day of the week. For example, do you know what changes to expect in search traffic over holidays? Daily analysis over the holidays can give you this insight. However, in some cases, campaign data simply doesn t change significantly enough on a daily basis to warrant reporting every day. We also suggest tracking total affiliate traffic and/or conversions every day. It will help you pinpoint unexpected problems with affiliate reporting or marketing strategy shifts by your top affiliates. It could take less than ten minutes per day to pull the data and confirm that things are on track. On top of that, a more in-depth weekly or monthly report enables you to analyze trends by affiliate category. creating more opportunities for conversation and in so doing, building and strengthening your relationships. This is something that will vary from one client to the next. Best Practices in PPC Reporting #7: Customize For Every Client Nothing is more obvious and annoying to a client than a canned set of metrics and reports that are transferred and used from one client to the next. This type of 'one size fits all' reporting approach casts a negative light on your firm s analytical abilities and immediately arouses suspicion for clients. Every client calls for unique metrics and reporting that include a variety of tables and graphs that are carefully analyzed. To provide this, you must first focus on data that changes or stands out, not on data that remains the same week after week or month after month. Reporting needs to be consistent from one period to the next, highlighting the highs and lows for the period in question. Some data will be generated using automated tools, but report itself will be a mix of automated data and custom, actionable insight. Increasing the frequency of your PPC reports can sometimes be beneficial for you and your clients, by 4 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

Best Practices in PPC Reporting: Part II Excel Tips to Improve Efficiency Using a paid search management platform can save time and money, and also automate the reporting process. But if you are not using paid search management software and are using Excel, there are certain ways to increase your efficiency in analyzing and reporting data. Here are some general suggestions when using Excel: Use keyboard shortcuts. They are a huge time saver. At the end of this post is a printable cheat sheet of the best ones. Constantly save your work. This is a good idea for working with any software, but Excel can sometimes freeze up with larger documents especially if you re using an older computer or working on many spreadsheets at the same time. Freeze panes. Use the Freeze Panes feature to keep important column or row headers on the screen when you scroll down or right. Hide anything you don t need. If you re just working on a few columns, go ahead and hide the rest of the data. It keeps the clutter down and you can work more streamlined this way. Format your document at the end. Don t waste time stopping in the middle of a spreadsheet to get your fonts and colors set. You may end up changing them later and then you have double the work. Use templates when possible. If you are constantly creating the same kind of report on a reoccurring basis, try building a blank version of it and saving it as one of your custom templates. That way, instead of starting from scratch, you already have the format ready to go. When using any Microsoft Office product such as Excel, you should have one hand on the keyboard s left side and one hand on the mouse. The reason why the left side is so important is that by using your pinky on CTRL, your other fingers can reach about 75% of the most important keyboard shortcuts you will use all of the time. For example, CTRL + Z is undo, CTRL + X is Cut, CTRL + B is Bold, CTRL + A is Select All, etc. This is not only important for Excel, but for Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. Master the left keyboard zone and you will be flying through every Office product like a pro. A comprehensive list of Excel keyboard shortcuts is available at http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/post/ free-excel-cheat-sheet/ In addition to the keyboard shortcuts, we've included two advanced Excel tools that are commonly used in PPC reporting: Pivot Tables and Secondary Chart Axes. Pivot Tables Excel cheat sheet: keyboard shortcuts Keyboard Shortcuts are absolutely crucial to being proficient and efficient with Microsoft Excel From flipping through worksheets to inserting columns or even spell checking, the seconds gained from using shortcuts not only adds up to hours over the course of the year, but also doesn t wear you out on things you can be doing in half the time. 5 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

Suppose you're starting with the Google Adwords Placement/Keywords Performance report above. Among the many questions you have, you'd like to know which keywords got the most impressions. Pivot tables allow you to quickly extract meaningful information by easily changing columns, rows and filters to get useful insights. To convert a regular data table into a pivot table, highlight your table then go to the Insert ribbon and choose Pivot Table. A Create Pivot Table dialogue box will open to confirm your data source and where you want the pivot table generated. The default option is in a new worksheet, but you can choose Existing Worksheet and pick a cell to begin the insertion. From there, you have to choose your columns, rows and values from the Field List. You now also have two extra ribbons for Pivot Table Tools, Options and Design. For our example above, here's how you'd build the pivot table: Drag the Placement/Keyword field into the Row Labels box and the Impressions field into the Values box. Then, drag the Ad Distribution field into the Report Filter box. The pivot table is built. The last thing to do is to choose Search Only from the report filter (so you see keywords, not placements) and click on the first impression value listed and click the ZA down arrow to sort from largest to smallest. What if you wanted to find out which ad groups had the most impressions? An account with even just 10-30 campaigns might easily have 100-200 ad groups. You could go back to Adwords and pull an ad group report and then filter and sort. But that would take time. With the current pivot table, just drag the Ad Group field into the Row Labels box and you have the data you need. Five More Essential AdWords Reports In addition to the AdWords Keyword Report, we ve identified the following five AdWords reports that when used effectively, can provide the majority of insight necessary to analyze your accounts on a day-today basis. 1. The Search Query Report This report shows you the query that was actually typed into a search engine that led to your ad being displayed. You should use the Search Query Report to find words that are not converting, yet are consuming your ad-spend dollars. When you find such words, add them as negative keywords. Then use the report to find words that are converting, yet are not keywords in your account. Add these words as keywords so that you can bid on these words based upon their actual returns. Remember, your broad match keywords will never convert higher than your exact match keywords. We recommend running this report every other Tuesday to conduct additional keyword and negative keyword research. 2. The Placement Performance Report This report shows you the sites and individual URLs where your content ads have been placed and is only useful if you re advertising on the content network. The first time you run this report, include the actual URLs where your ad has been shown then click on the URLs and look at the actual pages where your ads have been shown. If your ad is not being placed on the correct types of pages, then you should examine the keywords triggering your content ads. We recommend running this report every Wednesday to examine changes in cost per conversion, conversion rate and total conversions for bid changes purposes. Every other Wednesday, examine sites you wish to block or add as placements. 3. The Ad Text Report This report shows you all the ads that you are using along with associated metrics such as CTR or cost per conversion. Use this report when running any ad copy tests. In addition, run this report occasionally to find ads that are performing below the averages for your account. Then go to those ad groups and write new ads to test which ones perform better. You can also use the Ad Text Report to see metrics for other ad types, such as video or image ads. If you are running video ads, upload multiple static images (with the same video) to see which opening image has a higher 6 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

When it comes to pivot tables, it s important to use the most granular data you have available because pivot tables will aggregate values if there s a common connection between the data you re looking at. For example, a pivot table will know that you have 100 keywords in the Branded Terms ad group because even though the source table is at the keyword level, they all have Branded Terms listed as the ad group. The pivot table will recognize that and aggregate them together. Therefore, a best practice is always to get the most granular data into a pivot table as it will be able to calculate the higher level groups as long as these connections exist. You can even pull the source data at the day level and group them into weeks, months and years so you can see that information quickly in your pivot table. Secondary Chart Axes Have you ever been confused by an Excel chart with two data sets yet only one vertical axis? Here s how you can implement a secondary axis on the chart for the second data set. First, select the data on the chart you want to plot to see the Chart Tools tabs at the top of Excel. On the Format tab in the Current Selection group, click Format Selection. Then look for the Series Options tab and under Plot Series On click Secondary Axis and then click Close. play rate, CTR and cost per conversion. We recommend running this report every Thursday to finalize tests or create new text ads and every Friday to finalize landing page tests, create new landing pages and create new landing page tests. 4. The Geographic Performance Report This report provides data about where your ads are being shown and the associated metrics by geography. Even if you are a national advertiser, it can be beneficial to write ads for specific local areas. For example, one of Google s Quality Score metrics is CTR by geographic region. If your ads do well in San Francisco but poorly in New York City, then your ad will be shown more in San Francisco and less in New York City. However, the New York City metro area makes up more than 10 percent of the entire U.S. population. Therefore, a lack of exposure in that geography can significantly lower your total consumer base. We recommend running this report monthly, although if you are a regional business, then weekly is more appropriate. 5. The Impression Share Report On the left chart, it s hard to really know the values of the blue line (Dollar). On the right chart, now that the secondary axis has been enabled, the values are easy to see. To find impression share data, you must run a campaign report and select the following reporting options: impression share (IS); lost IS (rank); lost IS (budget); and exact match (IS). Once you ve generated the report, you will see how many impressions you are losing and why you are losing them. For example, if you are losing impression due to budget, then you can easily determine how many more impressions you would receive if you increased your budget. This is very useful for determining what your account could spend based on the current keywords in your account. We recommend running this report monthly to guide your next month s account performance improvement strategy. Note: While these five reports are easy to run, they are most effective when combined with the AdWords conversion tracking script. This is a different feature than what you find in Google Analytics. The conversion tracking script sends data from your website back to AdWords so that you can see conversion information in your AdWords reports. 7 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

Best Practices in PPC Reporting: Part III Case Study The AdWords Keyword Report Google offers numerous AdWords reports that allow you to view more data than most people have time to analyze. The AdWords Keyword Report should be your starting place for analyzing keyword data and shows metrics by individual keywords within your account. The main data points to examine when reviewing information by keyword are: Impressions Clicks CTR (clickthrough) Conversions Cost per conversion (CPA) Conversion rate Value per click Each keyword in your account should help you reach your marketing goals. It is essential to understand how each keyword performs, converts and helps you achieve your goals. When you want to know detailed information about any keyword, the Keyword Report should be the first place you look to see the appropriate metrics. You can have this report automatically created and emailed to you as a reminder it s time to examine keyword level data. You should regularly examine your Quality Scores, first page bids, and maximum CPCs to learn from your account and make adjustments as necessary so that you can extract the most value from your AdWords account. There are three ways to use the Keyword Report: Set bids based upon cost per conversion or other metrics within your established bid methodology. Identify low Quality Score keywords with disproportionately high spends and use that data to better optimize your Quality Scores. Find keywords that are not appearing on page one of searches. You should remember however, that just because a keyword is not on page one doesn t necessarily mean that you should raise your bid to get it there. If you cannot be profitable on page one then you need to decide if the keyword is effective on page two. If not, you need to optimize the landing page, ad text or other factors for this keyword before you raise your bid to be on page one. The following section provides an in-depth look at each of these three functions. Setting Maximum CPC If you use the AdWords conversion tracker, you can see your conversion metrics such as cost per conversion, ROI and total conversions for every keyword. This is the data that you will use to set maximum CPCs for every keyword in your account. As such, perhaps the most useful column in the Keyword Report is Value/Click, which shows the total revenue that a keyword brought to your company divided by the number of clicks that the keyword received. Essentially, it s your breakeven CPC. If you bid based upon ROI, then the formula for setting a bid is: Max CPC = (value/click)/desired ROI For example, if your value per click is $2.00 and you want a 200 percent ROI on your account, then the formula is: $1.00 = ($2.00 /2) If you have a hard cost of goods, then you need to take margins into account before you see your true value per click. If you are a profit-based bidder, you will use different formulas for determining your bids; however, the starting data is the exact same as ROI bidding. Understanding your Quality Score There are many times it is more profitable and 8 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

smarter to work on raising your quality score over raising your bids. If your quality score is under 5, then you shouldn t even be worrying about your bids. If your quality score is five to seven, then you should be working on both. If your quality score is seven or higher, then you will have to make most of your rank changes based upon changing your max CPCs; however, you should also be testing ad copy for both quality score and conversion purposes. Quality Score is kept at the keyword level for search. If you have a large account, it can be difficult to find the best places to start working on Quality Score. This is where pivot tables can help. Run a keyword report and include a minimum of keyword, quality score, impressions, and spend. Next, put the data into a pivot table so that you can see the average of quality score and the sum of cost for each ad group: Note that this provides an average of all the keywords within an ad group. If your keywords have very different impression rates in an ad group, rather than using the average of all the keyword Quality Scores, add a column to your Keyword Report that is called Real Quality Score that is calculated by the formula Quality Score*Impressions. Then in the pivot table, divide impressions by Real Quality Score. This will give you the average Quality Score for your ad groups normalized by impressions. Next, look for ad groups with low Quality Scores and high spends. When you find them, examine the Quality Score factors to see which ones you can improve. Now, look for ad groups with low quality scores and high spends. In the above example, you would make much better use of your time working on the ad group that has spent $20,874 with a quality score of 5 than ad group 1 which has spend of just $25 or ad group 12 that has an average quality score of 7.12. When you find ad groups that have high spends and low quality scores, examine the quality score factors to see which ones you can improve. First Page Bids The first page bid estimates how much you need to bid for your keywords to appear on page one in all the geographies your ad appears. If you are advertising to a small region, then the first page bid is fairly accurate. The larger your geography, the less accurate the first page bid becomes. For example, if your first page bid is $1.00 in Fargo, ND, but $3.00 in Chicago and you only bid $1.25, your ad will be on page one in Fargo but below page one in Chicago. Unfortunately, you cannot see first page bids broken down by geography Google only provides a single number per keyword. In the previous example, Google would display $3.00 as the first page bid since it is the highest amount across all geographies even though a lower bid gets your ad on page one in less competitive geographies (such as Fargo, ND). You can use conditional formatting in Excel to easily see what keywords are not on page one. While you should set bids based on performance data, there may be cases when your keywords never get enough page one exposure for you to know if those keywords would perform well there. Use the Keyword Report to look for places where your first page bid is below your max CPC. 9 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350

Acquisio is the world's leading provider of performance marketing solutions for agencies. Its flagship product, Acquisio SEARCH, helps marketers manage, optimize and automate all their paid search activities across all search engines. The platform also automates the production of slick and engaging client-ready reports, saving agencies significant amounts of time each month on their reporting activities. Other solutions include landing page creation and testing platform Acquisio PAGES, and Acquisio Managed Services. Acquisio's suite of solutions empowers over 300 interactive agencies around the world, providing them with increased productivity, efficiency and ROI. Learn more at www.acquisio.com 465 Victoria, Suite 300 Saint Lambert, QC Canada J4P 2J2 toll-free: +1.866.493.9070 direct: +1.450.465.2631 fax: +1.450.465.2841 Search Marketing Now webcasts and white papers provide authoritative and actionable education about search engine marketing issues. Register today for one of our free webcasts covering topics about search engine optimization, paid search advertising and search marketing in general. Search Marketing Now is a division of Third Door Media, which publishes web sites, and produces in-person events and webcasts. Each of the four brands - Search Engine Land, Search Marketing Expo, Search Marketing Now, and Sphinn - fosters continuing education, evolution and engagement for the community we serve. 10 2009 Third Door Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved http://searchmarketingnow.com Email: whitepapers@searchmarketingnow.com (203) 664-1350