Help! Is this PPC / Search Marketing program working?

The bottom line is the last few columns, conversions and revenues.


In the first, revenues doubled from one year to the next, despite a drop in actual conversion rate. That's because of more clicks. I presume that this YOY may not be the full year but still, there has been improvement in getting people to click (could be for various reasons, including better targeting) and lower cost per order. So a very successful campaign in my view and step in the right direction.


The second business is much of the same: a doubling of actual number of clicks, although a bit lower CTR despite better ad ranking, a tripling of orders helped by a higher conversion rate which of course led to a much reduced cost per order. Another win.


The aggregate hides many things, the details of the campaigns, but if these figures are right, the agency did its job. Not that there can't be more improvements to be made.

Why would it be a concern? Both businesses appear to make a profit (except for the second one in 2014). To be precise, making more revenues than the cost of advertising (ROAS: return on advertising spend). It would be nice if CPO was lower of course and improvements over time could reduce it further and it may have this year.

You have some data here from another business. How does it compare to yours? Do you have a similar value per order, conversion rate? This sort of information doesn't come along every day.

Hi SmallBizGal,

While both campaigns show signs of improvement on a YOY basis, I see a couple of things that would concern me.

1. The numbers seem quite small. I hope they are reporting in thousands of dollars (with the last 3 digits left off) because if those are actual numbers then neither of those would really qualify as a business, if actual dollars then those numbers are too small to be very meaningful. Most real businesses could not cover their overhead with only $6000 in revenue, and far less likely on just $1445. Please tell me those are daily revenue numbers, or at the least weekly numbers.

2. I noticed that the average ad positions seem on the low side for what you would expect for a highly successful campaign. In most industry niches the majority of the business (~90%) will go to the advertisers in the top 2 ad slots. While there are certainly some legitimate reasons one might have an average position in the 3.3 - 4.1 positions it seems to merit a bit closer scrutiny.

Another thing I noticed is that the average order value dropped in both instances, that could be an indication that lower prices were a significant cause of increased order volume. I would feel better about those numbers if I saw an increase in AOV along with an increase in order volume.

Here's something else to consider: Whether or not your campaigns are successful it really depends upon your goals. For example if your goal was to reach $200,000 in revenue, and you only reach $6,000 then I would consider that a huge failure, even if the YOY was an improvement , it was still far short of your goal.

Again, the meaning of the numbers gain significance if we are talking $6 million, and not just $6,000 as the report seems to indicate. It typically would not take much of a marketing effort to grow a business by only a few thousand dollars over the course of a year. Increasing revenue by a couple of million dollars YOY is much more of an achievement and shows that they are able to bring some value to your marketing.

I want you to think about this, if someone is making this much revenue with average ad positions in the 3.3 -4.1 range, image how much more business could be won if they manage to get even better ad positions to be profitable? At first glance it looks like a lot of business has been ceded to the competition. That might not be the fault of the agency, but it seems likely someone else out there could be doing a bit better than these guys and have figured out how to make the top ad positions payoff.