What is a PPC Dashboard?
A PPC dashboard displays data from all of your pay-per-click campaigns in real-time. Data is automatically collected from integrations including Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads, Instagram Ads and more. The idea is to give your agency and your clients a single place to monitor the performance of all of the campaigns in one place.
Why Your Agency Needs a PPC Dashboard
When you run a PPC campaign for clients, you’re more than likely running it across several different platforms. Because of this, it can be incredibly difficult to keep track of all the moving parts. And if you want to measure your campaign’s success, you don’t want to miss a single point of data that could contribute to the bigger picture.
Using a PPC dashboard like AgencyAnalytics sets your agency up for success–and is scalable. It automatically updates all your clients’ real-time metrics, and consolidates all their PPC campaign results in one place. This not only makes your client reporting a breeze, it also facilitates data analysis because you can easily compare costs, click-through rates, conversion rates, and more when all your data is presented together in an intuitive way.
If you prefer to send reports to clients periodically, check out our PPC report template.
8 Sections Included In Our Template
1. Cost
How well is your ad spend trending against your budget? You’ll typically have a predetermined budget before starting your PPC campaign, and you’ll always want to be aware of how much you’ve spent of the budget. Our dashboard displays the cost of each campaign in a single place, making it easier for you to track your overall cost vs. budget.
It’s important to remember that some platforms, like Google Ads, will sometimes exceed your daily budget in order to maximize the number of clicks you get. This is why it’s more important to consider the total monthly cost displayed on your dashboard to ensure you’re sticking within your budget.
2. Conversions
The number of conversions is one of the most important numbers to track while considering the success of your campaign. Ultimately, you want as many conversions as possible from your PPC campaigns. This number is calculated by counting the number of times someone clicks on one of your ads and completes your CTA (call to action). This number could represent how many customers have purchased a product, or signed up for your client’s newsletter.
The PPC dashboard simply shows you the number of conversions your campaign is gaining, which can be a solid indicator of how well your strategy is working, but it’s up to you to decipher what that means based on the rest of the information your dashboard displays. If you’re not getting a high number of conversions, but other key metrics are performing well, you can start tracking down where the disconnect is happening.
3. Cost Per Conversion
You should use cost per conversion in tandem with the overall cost of your PPC campaign and your client’s budget. This metric tells you how much it costs to win a new customer. If the customer doesn’t purchase enough to make up for the cost it took to get them to convert, you’ll likely end disappointing your client.
Monitor this number closely and keep it within the range that your client wants. That way, you can temper their expectations and show that your campaigns are actually working. And if your campaigns aren’t gaining any return on investment based on this number, you can tweak your campaigns appropriately.
4. Conversion Rate
While the conversion rate may seem like the same thing as the number of conversions your campaign is gaining, it’s actually quite a different number. Your conversion rate is measured as a percentage, and it gives you a deeper look into the efficiency of each campaign.
For example, if you have a low conversion rate but a seemingly high number of conversions, you can confidently determine that your ads have the potential of doing more. When you look at your conversion rate and number of conversions together, you can more easily tell how effective your campaign’s CTA is and if your offer is actually interesting to potential customers.
5. Impressions
The number of impressions you receive tells you how many people are viewing your ad. While this metric alone doesn’t tell you how well your campaign is performing, it’s still an essential KPI to measure in tandem with other KPIs like conversion rates and click-through rates.
If you have a high conversion rate, but disappointingly low impressions, you can know that your campaign has room to grow and reach more people. This gives you the kind of actionable insights you need to make the appropriate adjustments in order to achieve maximum campaign success.
6. Clicks
Clicks are the bread and butter of pay-per-click campaigns. You don’t get any conversions without any clicks, so this KPI is something you absolutely cannot ignore. This metric simply measures how many people are clicking on your ads. Going further, the number of clicks give you an idea of how much interest your ads are gathering online.
Remember that a high number of clicks early in your campaign can be a good indicator of success, but they aren’t the only thing you should be considering. We recommend using the number of clicks for a quick campaign performance check. If you notice ads that aren’t getting enough clicks, you can pause them and allocate more budget to more successful ads.
7. CTR (Click-Through Rate)
You know impressions measure how many people are looking at your ads and clicks measure how many people are actually clicking on those ads. Your PPC dashboard will divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and give you the click-through rate (CTR).
In the end, this number tells you how effective your ads are in getting potential customers to act. If this number is low, there’s likely something wrong with your ads. Either your CTA isn’t clear, or your ad copy and offer aren’t compelling enough.
Take note that your CTR is not the same as your conversion rate. Just because people are clicking on your ads doesn’t mean they are converting once they reach your client’s website. Like other KPIs, look at your CTR in comparison to other performance metrics. For example, if you have a high CTR but a low conversion rate, you might be targeting too broad of an audience.
8. View-Through Conversions
View-through conversions (VTC) happen when someone sees your ad, doesn’t click on it, but comes back to the site within 30 days and converts. This is a relatively new KPI in the world of PPC campaigns, but it’s an important metric to consider, especially when it comes to your display ads.
Since display ads often have a minimal CTR, it can be incredibly difficult to determine how effective they are. Your VTCs help you understand how well these kinds of ads are performing so you can determine the best websites to target in order to maximize overall conversions.
