You’re finalizing the monthly PPC report, excited to show the progress you’ve seen in the account. He highlights A/B testing that revealed improvements in CPA, and a new Meta campaign that drives qualified marketing leads.
But when you present a report to leaders, you still get questions like, “How do these actions help us grow revenue?”
Knowing your audience is an important marketing principle, and the same applies when creating marketing reports. A report directed at a high-growth marketing director of individual campaigns will look different from a report directed at a C-level executive.
If you are creating a report that will be viewed by senior management, consider what they need to respond to. A CFO may answer to shareholders or VC firms, but ultimately, their primary concern is maximizing revenue. If the report does not clearly answer the question of profit from investing in PPC, you are setting yourself up for failure.
In this article, we’ll consider the metrics your CFO really cares about when reviewing paid media campaign reporting.
A Note on Tracking
Before starting ad campaigns or reporting, be sure to set up proper conversion tracking on your website to measure key actions on ad platforms and analytics. If you don’t have confidence in your way of measuring data, you can’t trust the numbers you put in your reports.
Agree on Shared Terms
Before creating your first report, you should talk to key stakeholders about your internal revenue goals and where PPC fits in as part of those. For example, a business may set an annual goal of increasing revenue by 10% or increasing its customer base by 20%.
When considering the metrics you include and how you talk about them, consider how the metrics relate to shared business goals. For example, you might be able to show not only that Meta had a 10% increase in conversions but also that it was a major contributing channel to last month’s growth goal.
It may also help to include a section in your report where you highlight overall goals, such as a graph showing the number of new accounts or revenue compared to plan.
CPA, But Consider Conversion
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a basic metric for PPC campaigns. However, one common question faced when introducing performance and including this measure is: “What is conversion?”
Small changes, such as filling out forms and picking up goods, can be helpful in developing the right conditions, but especially for senior management, you need to be very clear about what you are reporting when sharing the costs associated with the change action.
Ideally, the CPA in this case should be tied as closely as possible to the client. Although, especially in long life businesses, it may not be possible to report on actual signed up customers in a monthly PPC report, you can report on qualified salespeople.
Next, if you have the right CRM tracking to monitor leads through the lifecycle of the first contact with a customer, you can include CPAs for long-term customer acquisition. For example, if your average time to last sale is 90 days, display a view of the past 90 days, including total costs and CPAs broken down by qualified marketing creators, qualified sales leads, and last sales.
Further reading: Why Budgets Overspend Even With Target ROAS or CPA? – Ask for PPC
Customer Acquisition Costs
This leads to a broader metric: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), which represents the total cost of sales/marketing divided by the number of customers acquired during the same period.
CAC can be displayed as an overall metric, and reported at the channel level if your CRM has the ability to measure customers by source. You should report on trends over time, which will both show how a certain mix of campaigns and channels are performing, as well as identify seasonal trends.
Return to Ad Usage
ROAS may be easier to define for some types of accounts than others (for example, ecommerce vs. B2B products with long sales cycles), but it can help identify return on investment from PPC campaigns. If revenue rates are measured correctly, ROAS can help answer the question, “How much did we make from this campaign?”
Yes, be prepared to provide context and answer questions about how ROAS is calculated for your product. For example, ad platform numbers may or may not include additional costs such as shipping and taxes.
As with CPA and CAC, you should report on ROAS at an aggregate level (cross-account and cross-campaign), as well as at a granular level, where it makes sense to call for specific efforts.
Lifetime Value
Getting new customers is great, but what if a customer buys one cheap product and never buys from your brand again? Or if they pay one month’s subscription but then cancel?
Including LTV in reporting allows you to see not only which channels and campaigns are driving the most customers but also contributing to the most valuable ones.
In an ecommerce business, you can look at data on how much revenue is generated from one person’s purchases over time. With a SaaS business, you can look at the cost of subscriptions over time. For an industrial equipment supplier, you can look both at how much revenue comes from product purchases and if a customer uses your business to provide you ongoing service.
Growing Growth
When testing a new channel, campaign type, or offering, the primary reason for obtaining funding is proof that we can bring in new revenue that would not otherwise come from existing efforts. Showing new customer figures and increased revenue figures in your prospecting efforts will help secure future funding.
Relying only on in-field tracking can be tricky here, as Google’s new campaign may get credit for conversions tracked and influenced by Meta. While ad platforms are adding their own ways to track increased exposure, these are still muted at the platform level.
Using the Media Mix Modeling (MMM) tool here can provide a comprehensive view of how adding or removing from your paid media portfolio affects revenue. You can also perform growth tests by dividing campaigns into specific regions and comparing them to similar regions, or by comparing two time periods. Looking at the results at the end of the test can show whether the new initiative has helped to increase customer growth and profitability.
When presenting with additional functionality, be clear about the evaluation method, but explain the concepts in a way that is mindful of the technical knowledge level of your leadership team. Lead by results, and include additional technical documentation in the appendix.
Wait for a Reason
When applying the above steps to your client or stakeholder, think carefully about what questions will emerge from the data. If conversions are down, you’ll be asked why.
You will build rapport with the managers reviewing the report if you can be transparent about poor performance, but also be able to provide a reasonable explanation as to why it is. For example, you might compare seasonal performance to last year at the same time and notice that business is generally sinking. Or a technical problem with the form on the website may interfere with the prospect’s ability to contact you.
Ideally, include brief points in the report that address these potential concerns beforehand, and be prepared to discuss in-depth explanations when asked.
Start Building Better Reports
Consider the metrics presented in this article, and strategies for presenting them to your CFO and other executives. Now think about how you reported previously and any pain points you may have had in achieving a shared understanding of performance.
Build on a foundation of strong tracking to highlight the numbers that will resonate most with the people who will be talking on the purse strings. Wake up to the questions you ask and the additional data your stakeholders may request, and continue to tailor your reports to meet your stakeholders where they are.
Additional resources:
Featured image: Natalya Kosarevich/Shutterstock
