Tried & True: PPC Reports We Love

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here are Clix, we’re always looking for additional ways to gain valuable insights into our accounts, gather new information and learn new techniques.

We wanted to share a list of our favorite reports to run and review and why we think you should check them out (if you haven’t).

Bethany Bey

Search Term Report

This is probably the report I’m in most often in my accounts. It’s essential to review this report in order to exclude searches that aren’t relevant in order to save money and also to find new keywords to add into your campaigns. Other than being an important part of campaign optimization, it’s very entertaining to see what people are actually typing in to Google and Bing. I remember when I started in PPC in 2010 that every client would have “justin bieber” included somewhere in their search term report.

Auction Insights Report

Most advertisers have an understanding of who their competitors are in their industry. What I love about the auction insights report, is you can see who is your actual competition on the SERPs. Many times the companies listed to align with who an advertiser would expect to be their competition. Often times though, you’ll discover new competitors even from other industries who are bidding on the same keywords as you.

Michelle Morgan

Facebook Audience Overlap Tool

Not really a report so much as a tool, but the Facebook Audience Overlap Tool is incredibly valuable when strategizing campaigns. I actually wrote about this recently on Social Media Examiner. Facebook makes it so easy to choose a bunch of targeting methods and add lots of campaigns and get your ads running. But unlike Search campaigns, Social campaigns have a potential for creative fatigue and oversaturation. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up targeting the same person lots of times through different methods without even knowing it. That’s where the Audience Overlap Tool comes into play to help you avoid that and save ad spend.  

Custom Reports in Google Analytics

Again, maybe a bit of a cop out here, but the Google Analytics Custom Report section is where I spend a good amount of time. We’re constantly looking for valuable insights for our accounts, but sometimes standard reporting just can’t get you where you need to go. With custom reports, I can focus on only the stats I want to see, side by side in the same report, for only the traffic sources I want to focus on whether that’s a specific channel, campaign, or group of keywords, I can see only what I want to see.

Abby Woodcock

Bing’s Website URL Report

This is one area where Bing has an advantage over Google reporting. I love the ability to see how individual partner sites are performing, as well as being able to exclude individual sites that are performing poorly. The more insight for optimizations, the better!

Facebook’s App Engagement Report

This report makes it super quick and easy to see different engagement metrics in your App campaigns. I like a lot of the preset reports in the interface like this one; it’s much quicker than having to manually add and customize your columns every time you want to see something different.

Kristin Palmer

Google Analytics Source/Medium Report

This report is my “go to” report to check in on how my campaigns across multiple channels.  It’s great because I can see everything at a high level (split by channel for paid & organic) or drill down to get more specific data. The analytics date comparison tool also helps if I am trying to drill down on changes in data over time.

Labels Report

When I have themes across multiple campaigns, I use label reports to easily track trends and results from all of them.  I use label reports the most for ads as I can get valid results faster with results rolled up by label, but often for keywords as well.  

Tim Jensen

Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels

This report is crucial for analyzing conversion performance beyond last-click and for seeing how multiple online channels contribute to conversions or revenue. It’s important to look at both how various paid platforms work with each other, as well as how they correlate with results from other sources like organic search and social media. For instance, you may find that Facebook ads yield visitors who later convert via paid or organic search.

Devices Report

Looking at performance by device often informs some quick but effective bid adjustments that can greatly improve campaign results. You may find that most of your traffic is going to mobile devices but with a significantly higher CPA than desktop. Also, this report can yield some surprising results that may contradict assumptions. For instance, you may assume that tablet users aren’t converting, but they may actually be more valuable than desktop in a particular campaign.

Andrea Taylor

Search Term Reports

This has always been one of my favorite reports simply because it provides so much valuable insight into how people are searching for your service or product. When I pull this report with the intent of adding negative keywords, I like to add a filter for the “added/excluded” column to include search terms that we’re not already excluding or targeting.

LinkedIn’s Website Demographics Report Feature

This is one of the coolest new ways for B2B advertisers to learn more about precisely who is visiting their website. You can get demographic information breakdowns by job title, industry, job seniority, job function, company, company size, location and country. Each of these features will show you impressions, clicks, CTR, conversions and conversion rates associated with each. With the ability to add date ranges into the mix, you are able to see how digital marketing campaigns and other marketing channels are impacting your site. I think pairing this with an analytics platform + LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the way to win the B2B game on LinkedIn.

We hope these reports are helpful for you to find new ways report and review your accounts.

What are your tried and true reports to run? We’d love to hear them in the comments or tweet to us!