As a marketer, you know that tracking the performance of your PPC and SEM campaigns is crucial.

Unless you’re one of the analytically minded people who actually like looking at reports and analyzing data, you may just dread the time of the month when you need to review how your marketing campaigns are performing. PPC (Pay Per Click) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are two crucial aspects of the digital marketing world so whether you like it or not, it is something you need to be tracking. 

Luckily there are some incredible tools out there that will make your life so much easier, especially as an agency that has to do this multiple times for multiple clients. Some of these tools are so great and easy to understand.

We will guide you through the best PPC and SEM reporting tools for agencies. So sit back, relax, and let’s dive into the world of data and analytics! 

PPC Reporting

PPC reporting is gathering and analyzing data from Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaigns to evaluate their performance.

Pay-per-click ads can get complicated. They need to be carefully designed in a way that connects with your target audience. You need to be strategic about the types of ads you choose to run and also make sure you’re executing the campaign successfully. If your ads are not driving traffic to your website and converting into leads or sales, you’re basically just burning money. 

Simply put, PPC reporting helps you figure out if your ads are working. These tools track different metrics to determine if your ROAS (return on ad spend) is worth it. If you need help, you can tweak some things because the goal is for your revenue to be at least four times what you are spending on ads. When used correctly, reporting tools can give you valuable insights and data which will maximize the potential of your ad campaign. 

A PPC report will track the performance of ad campaigns so you can see how the ads are performing among audiences. The only way to get better at running ads is to look at the data and see what people respond well to. If they’re not responding at all, well it’s time to make some changes!

What is a PPC Report? 

A PPC report is a document that provides insights into the performance of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaigns. This report typically includes data on ad spend, clicks, impressions, click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, cost per click (CPC), and return on investment (ROI).

The primary purpose of a PPC report is to help you track and evaluate the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. By analyzing the data presented in the report, you can identify which keywords, ad copies, and landing pages are driving the most clicks and conversions. This information can then be used to optimize the campaigns for better performance and ROI.

There are many different metrics you can track, but here’s a rundown of the most important ones. You want to make sure that the reporting tool you choose is capable of giving you all of these metrics. 

Impressions: How many people are seeing your ad – not clicks on, just shows how many views your ad got. 

Clicks: The number of people that clicked on your ad. 

Cost Per Click (CPC): This tells you how much you pay when someone clicks on your ad. Is determined by the total cost of your ad divided by the clicks. 

Conversion Rate: How many people purchased or signed up for what you were advertising. 

Cost Per Conversion/Acquisition: How much does it cost you to make a conversion? 

Keyword Performance:  Highlights the most important keywords from your ad or landing page copy to show which are performing best. 

Ad Performance: How your ad performs against similar ads and where your ad appears on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). 

Quality Score: How relevant your ad and landing page are. 

Campaign Metrics: If you are running multiple campaigns, you can see how everything performs together. 

Device Performance: This shows what devices your audience is using to view and click on your ads. 

Channel Performance: This shows you which channels are generating the most ad traffic.

SEM Reporting 

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a blanket term that encompasses PPC but it does not just refer to that alone. Basically, SEM includes any digital marketing activity that increases the visibility of a website in the eyes of a search engine.

SEM mainly refers to Organic SEO (search engine optimization), Local SEO, and PPC. The goal of all of these combined marketing efforts is to get you on the first page of Google.

What is an SEM Report?

An SEM Report is a comprehensive analysis of the performance of a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. This report provides insights into various metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ad spend. It helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your SEM strategies and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.

Since PPC is a big part of SEM, all of the metrics we mentioned above carry over to the SEM report. To measure your SEO efforts, you will also be wanting to look at: 

Referring Domains: This shows how many websites are providing backlinks to your site. If your site is mentioned on multiple pages of their website, it still only counts as one referring domain. New referring domains are the big ticket item to track here. 

Domain Authority: This calculates the overall SEO strength of a website. 

On-page Optimization Score: Tracks anything to do with your website looking good to a search engine. Including if your keyword placement follows the rules of easy readability, your images have alt tags, clear URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions. 

Organic Visibility: This shows how much organic traffic your site is getting. 

Organic Conversions: This shows how many customers are purchasing your products and services based on your organic efforts alone.

Best PPC and SEM Reporting Tools 

There are multiple tools out there that you can use to measure a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But since PPC and SEM are both under the same umbrella, it’s way more convenient to have a one-stop shop of a tool that shows you everything you need to know. This way you get a clear picture of your marketing efforts as a whole but if you want specific details, you can drill down into segments. This sure beats running and trying to analyze 10 different reports from different platforms and then trying to see what’s working and what isn’t.

We will take a look at the best PPC and SEM Reporting Tools for Agencies to use to track the performance of the campaigns. Not only does this help you make the necessary tweaks to improve performance, they make you look sharp and professional in the eyes of your clients.

1. Google Analytics / Google Looker Studio

Google Analytics is our first tool. You may not like to hear it since it isn’t the most user-friendly but come on, these guys invented the ads game we’re all playing! Not only is Google Analytics free but so is Google Looker Studio which can be used to create some pretty nifty SEM report templates. 

If you’re clueless about Google Analytics, there is a free training and many YouTube channels that break it down. It’s worth spending the time to learn because it’s a great base of what all the other tools will have as well. Plus, why wouldn’t you want to learn from the master? 

Google Analytics has so many features that can help you manage your PPC campaigns. Some of the key features you’ll learn to love are: 

• You can track how your landing pages are doing and sort by organic and paid traffic. 
• Show you the key PPC metrics on one convenient dashboard and allows you options to filter. 
• Gives you information on how the people who are on your site behave.
• Side-by-side comparison of PPC campaigns.

2. WordStream

WordStream is a fantastic free tool touted as an analytics holy grail for over 300,000 users. They have many different free digital marketing assessments on their website and provide you with a report card showing your score on all things SEM. You can try the free business listings grader, Google Ads performance grader, Facebook Ads performance Grader, or their free keywords tool. Check out their free tools and see what your score is, it can’t hurt! 

Some of the best features of WordStream are: 

• It tracks all PPC and marketing campaigns from a single dashboard.
• You can filter and set up your dashboard to show only the metrics you want to see.
• For underperforming campaigns, it provides recommendations to improve your keywords and increase the relevance of your ads.

3. Reporting Ninja

While Google Looker Studio offers the option to build your own SEM reporting template, we must admit that Reporting Ninja does it much better.

Their amazing feature to white label and automatically email custom reports is a dream for any agency. They also integrate data from 21 different sources which you can pull from to create any reports. They are also working on adding more to the list. 

Some of the best perks of Reporting Ninja are: 

• Easy to use drag and drop report builder.
• Scheduled PPC reporting automation.
• Whitelabel showing your agency’s name.
• Reporting for PPC, SEO, and conversions.

4. SEMRUSH

This company is an expert in all things SEO so why wouldn’t they crush PPC and SEM as well? They actually do. Their PPC report is a user-friendly, intuitive platform that not only tracks your results but compares them against three of your competitors as well. SEMRUSH PPC reporting has these great features: 

• Recommends highly-searched keywords based on your campaign.
• Can audit existing campaigns and assists you with optimizing them for peak performance. 
• Generate detailed reports with all of the key SEM metrics you will need.
• Allows you to tailor custom reports for specific needs including tracking your ad’s visibility in search engine results pages.

5. Octoboard

Another all-in-one tool that has tons of integration options and also a huge template library of over 300 pre-built reports. Octoboard checks all the boxes with its ability to build reports, track keyword ranking, and optimize ad spend. It also has a great feature of client portals so you don’t have to keep everything on your shared company drive! Some of the best features that make Octoboard the perfect PPC and SEM tool are:

• Currently, over 50 data, integrations are available and always expanding.
•  White-label reporting options. 
• Unlimited everything, as many users, client portals, reports, and dashboards as you need. 
• Competitive Pricing.

6. Whatagraph

Whatagraph should really be called WhatAReportingTool, but maybe that name was already taken. You can not only integrate almost everything with Whatagraph but also track your client’s organic and paid campaigns easily. They also offer automated report emailing, white labeling, and pre-built templates.

Some of the best features of Whatagraph are: 

• Every type of reporting tool your agency could need including SEM, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Call Tracking, and 25 others! 
• White-label reporting options. 
• Various data integrations. 
• Organic and paid channel monitoring.

7.  DashThis

DashThis knows that reporting is one of the biggest time-wasters for an agency. While it needs to be done, it’s never fun doing it. Their tool is fast, easy, and customizable to include all of the KPIs you want to measure. Their free trial makes it easy to test out and their customer service team is top-notch. Other great features included in DashThis are: 

• Customizable templates that can be modified in the blink of an eye.
• Automated email delivery. 
• Unlimited users. 
• Ability to add your own data sources if you have one that’s not already on their integration list.

8. AgencyAnalytics

AgencyAnalytics knows that everyone has a certain way they like to build reports. This is why they created a dashboard that allows you to make it how you want it from the customizable widgets to the white labeling to the drag-and-drop builder. This is a great option for agencies as it allows you to build specific reports and templates tailored to your client’s goals. This feature personalizes the experience for them.

You will also find:

• Custom metrics for some of the most in-depth reporting we’ve ever seen.
• Goal setting feature which the campaigns can be tracked against.
• Seamless integration and many options. 
• Presentation mode so you can explain the report to the client.

Conclusion

In this day and age, keeping track of your marketing campaigns through reports doesn’t have to be a stressful task that fills you with dread. Thanks to the availability of advanced PPC and SEM reporting tools, you can now perform these tasks with ease and even find them enjoyable.

These reporting tools are some of the best in the market, providing comprehensive insights into your campaigns’ performance metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ad spend. By utilizing these tools, you can easily evaluate the effectiveness of your PPC and SEM strategies and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.