PPC, KPI, if you\u2019re thinking of hiring someone to help market your accounting firm, you might have heard these terms. But what do they mean? There\u2019s no reason for an accountant to find them intimidating because they\u2019re all based on math. Each of them tells a story about how your website and marketing efforts are producing results.<\/p>\n
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Learning the basics of these terms, and how to interpret them, will help you make budgeting decisions for future marketing pushes. It also gives you a way to evaluate which ads, blog posts, or SEO efforts have connected best with target customers. Looking back on your social media marketing maps out a better path forward.<\/p>\n
The reality is that while the internet and social media marketing appear to be free, it\u2019s not. You will have to dedicate resources to advertising online, so you should know how to tell if you\u2019re receiving a return on that investment.<\/p>\n
PPC<\/strong><\/p>\n PPC stands for pay-per-click, and it refers to when a company places advertising on a website and then pays the website owner \u201cper click\u201d through the ad. You might also see it referred to as CPC or cost per click.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll hear it when discussing search engine advertising, where you bid to appear in the advertised results at the top or right of the screen. When someone enters a search term into Google, the search engine goes through all of the companies that have bid on that term. Google\u2019s algorithm will look at the keywords used, the money the advertiser has bid, and the quality of the ad\u2019s landing page when determining which ads to return in search results.<\/p>\n PPC can vary widely, depending on the keyword value and competition. You could pay $3 for a click, but if that click turns into $400 of business, it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n CPI<\/strong><\/p>\n You also might have to pay just for a target customer to see your company, ad, or social media post. This is your cost per impression or how much it cost you to put yourself in front of your audience. It builds reach and brand awareness, which eventually lead to sales.<\/p>\n To calculate this metric, take the total cost of your advertising and divide it by the number of impressions. To get the cost per mille, or cost for reaching a thousand impressions, multiply that number by 1,000.<\/p>\n If you are trying to gauge the effectiveness of one social media post versus another, this is a good metric. If one ad cost 0.50 to get in front of each person it reached, and another 0.30, look at what made the one ad more effective (cheaper) than the other. Then, try to replicate this in your next ad campaign.<\/p>\n CTR<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you tweeted out a link to your latest blog post. What\u2019s your CTR? Click-thru rate goes a step further than CPI, telling you how many of the people who saw your post clicked through it. While CPI tells you who saw your ad, tweet, or Instagram post, CTR tells you if it interested them enough for them to click.<\/p>\n Calculate the click-thru rate by taking clicks and dividing it by times it was seen. Again, comparing the CTR between two posts can lead to further information about what interests your target audience, which social media platform they prefer to interact on, and if the language of your social media posts is effective.<\/p>\n Engagement Rate<\/strong><\/p>\n While sometimes used interchangeably with CTR, your engagement rate applies more to social media posts where there is nothing to click. This could be a \u201clike\u201d on Facebook or Instagram. In addition to how many people see your post, how many interact with it? That\u2019s your engagement rate.<\/p>\n Take your interaction with a post \u2013 the number of likes, shares, and comments \u2013 and divide it by the number of your followers to get your engagement rate. For example, if an Instagram post has 300 engagements, and your account has 15,000 followers, your engagement rate is only 2%. What is considered \u201cgood\u201d will depend upon your industry and the social media platform.<\/p>\n CPA<\/strong><\/p>\n This metric is relevant to both social media and your business in general. CPA, or cost per acquisition, tells you how much it costs to gain a new customer.<\/p>\n Get it by dividing your campaign\u2019s total cost by the number of conversions. Online, measure a conversion by a sale, and Google Analytics will give you this percent in their reports. Offline, you could think of conversions as the number of new clients who have come to your business from online marketing efforts. Consider adding a \u201chow did you hear of us?\u201d question to your website contact forms or asking during an initial meeting to help gather this information.<\/p>\n