Does Your PPC Measure Up?

Already an easily obscure area of marketing, understanding what to do with pay-per-click (PPC) data is a challenge while attempting to understand whether or not a PPC campaign is inherently successful. Fortunately, three metrics continue to be generally accepted as key success indicators:

• The click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of consumers who have seen your PPC ad and selected it.
• The conversion rate is the percentage of consumers who have converted to a lead or sale or however you define conversion success.
• The cost per click (CPC) is the amount paid for each of your PPC ads that consumers click.

Together, these three metrics tell you how large your audience capture was (click-through rate), how much of that audience did what you wanted them to do (conversion rate), and how much you paid to get them to interact with your PPC campaign (cost per click).

We thought it valuable to see where five key industries – B2B, e-commerce, health and medical, industrial services, and technology – fall in terms of the three metrics above. This data is intended to offer a loose benchmark for anyone within these industries as a way to frame the success of their PPC campaigns though the results vary widely based on your offer, differentiators and competitive pressure.

In 2018, Google AdWords PPC campaigns sponsored across the search network yielded the following:

• Click-Through Rate Benchmarks
  • B2B 2.41%
  • E-commerce 2.69%
  • Health and medical 3.27%
  • Industrial services 2.61%
  • Technology 2.09%
  • The average CTR was 3.17% across all sixteen Google AdWords industries.
• Conversion Rate Benchmarks
  • B2B 3.04%
  • E-commerce 2.81%
  • Health and medical 3.36%
  • Industrial services 3.37%
  • Technology 2.92%
  • The average conversion rate was 3.75% across all sixteen Google AdWords industries.
• Cost-Per-Click Benchmarks
  • B2B $3.33
  • E-commerce $1.16
  • Health and medical $2.62
  • Industrial services $2.56
  • Technology $3.80
  • The average CPC was $2.69 across all sixteen Google AdWords industries.

While this data is simply meant to be a loose benchmark, it does provide a baseline for assessing your PPC performance at a high level. If you are already hitting these benchmarks, develop your own baseline and work to improve from there keeping close watch over your specific cost of customer acquisition.