What is KPI?
A KPI or "key performance indicator" is an important and measurable characteristic of a process. KPIs can help measure the progress towards an objective or goal. Generally they are part of an organization's Key Result Indicator framework and are used to monitor, control and report on financial, commercial, social and/or environmental results. KPI is a term that is used in many areas of our lives. When it comes to marketing, it helps us to measure performance of any marketing campaign including Google Ads campaigns.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a critical business metric that key to the success of all businesses. Without KPI's you won't be able to track sales and marketing activities accurately. Let's see the most important KPIs for Google Ads campaigns.
What are KPIs for Google Ads Campaigns?
Google Ads is one of the most used platforms in digital marketing. The biggest expenses of any company's digital marketing are probably for Google Ads. However, the fact that the expenditures are so high allows us to see another important detail besides the importance of Google Ads. High spending may be an indicator for the fact that people don't know exactly what to do. Companies who do not know how to use Google Ads may end up spending much more than they need to. This is where KPIs come into play. Because KPIs main purpose is to measure how well anything works and how well it performs. Thanks to the KPIs used for Google Ads, which we will talk about in the rest of our article, you can see how well your ads or sales strategies are working.
Number of Clicks
Unsurprisingly, our first KPI is clicks. In fact, this KPI, which allows us to provide insight on many issues, is a measurement tool that, if observed, allows us to obtain useful results for our campaigns. It would be logical to observe where our clicks are more and where we are less, and then look for a solution to them. For example, we may consider improving or deactivating a campaign with few clicks. Or if the clicks are already high, it makes sense to show more interest in this campaign.
Click- Through Rate
CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown. Basically, clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. This is an extremely important KPI. Firstly, this KPI tells us how close we are to the target audience. If you are showing your ads to right audience, people will click on your ad and consequently your CTR will be high. If you are not targeting the correct group, while impressions are high, click will be low. The second thing that affects CTR is the quality of your ad. If your ad is not well-structured and informative, people who see that will be less likely to click. Therefore, CTR will be lower. In short, if you are having trouble with your CTR, try to improve your targeting and ad quality.
Cost Per Conversion
Cost per conversion is undoubtedly a Google Ads KPI that you should be tracking. It's a cost-effective way to measure the success of your advertising campaigns and will help you improve big picture performance.
The calculation of this KPI is very simple. It can be seen as one of the easiest KPIs to analyze. The point to note is that each conversion may need its own unique tracking. A KPI that needs to be calculated differently based on sites' target audiences or sales strategies. You should define your conversion at first. What action you want your audience to take? If you have a site that consist informative blog posts, you can define a user's 5 page visits as a conversion. If you are an e-commerce company, a purchase can be your conversion. With this KPI you can see how much you spend per conversion.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is a metric which is used to know how profitable a campaign of an ad network is. It is considered as the most accurate measure of effectiveness and efficiency of an online marketing campaign. Conversion Rate on Google Ads is more complex than other platforms. But if you have a clear goal in mind about the action you would like the visitor to take, then it is possible to have better performance with less effort.
Conversion rate is a KPI based on a very simple calculation. It can be calculated by simply taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of total ad interactions that can be tracked to a conversion during the same period. When you follow this KPI, you can easily see the high and low rates and rank them. As a result of this ranking, you can easily see which campaign you should focus on. In this way, you can deactivate your campaigns that you think are not efficient.
Number of Impressions
The number of impressions on Google Ads is a very important metric to track. It acts as a measure of how many people have viewed your ads.
Always check the “number of impressions” for your Google Ads campaigns. A common mistake with many advertisers is this number is often taken for granted and not checked as closely as it should be. In that regard, we need to find the root cause of why it decreased in the first place. The main reason is usually because maybe you are bidding too low compared to your competitors. Or maybe your target group is too small, in that case you should add more keywords.
Therefore, before you do anything, please look at the “Impressions” first if that number has dropped significantly over time or has stayed steady or increased after being low – then go on to see where you can improve your campaign to make it more successful...
Impression Share
Impression share on Google Ads is a metric which indicates the percentage of times your ad was shown compared to how often it is eligible to show. Your ads can appear when searches made from a target group you specify, an interest you specify, or when search terms includes your target keywords. However, you can’t 100% guarantee that your ads will be shown in every time when a person searches for your product or services. In other words, if there are 100 opportunity searches where your ad can be shown, if you get impressions in 80 of them, your search impression share rate will be calculated as 80%. Thanks to this KPI, you see how much efficiency we get from your campaigns.