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The rapid advancement of technology, growing demand to squeeze the most out of every minute, and the desire to objectively present data are driving our world to become ever more visual.
There exists a need for detailed information to be presented and understood quickly whether in news media, on social or in daily business reports.
As a pay-per-click (PPC) manager, you probably deal with mounds of ad data every week, but it’s often hard to:
No doubt you’ve come across charts before that either didn’t make any sense or did little to present information in a way that illustrated a point.
Pay-per-click (PPC) data visualization strategy paired with custom and relevant charts is very powerful.
Excel spreadsheet is one of the popular data analysis and visualization tools used by small and medium-sized search engine marketing (SEM) ad agencies.
It’s easy to use, highly responsive, and most importantly, it comes pre-loaded with visualization charts.
However, it lacks custom charts purposely built for pay-per-click (PPC). Ideally, to save time and make things a little bit simpler for you, you need charts calibrated with attributes relevant to PPC, such as metrics and dimensions.
One area where Excel fails terribly is generating intuitive and custom charts for comparing two sets of PPC ad campaign data as you shall see later.
Comparing performance across ad campaigns, metrics, dimensions, and ad groups is critical to the success of your paid search marketing ads clients.
This blog will walk you through simple and easy-to-remember steps for creating an intuitive and customizable Excel chart comparing two sets of data.
What’s Data Visualization?
Data visualization is the act of taking data and placing it into a visual context, such as a chart.
In the world of Big Data, data visualization tools and technologies are essential to analyze massive amounts of information and make data-driven decisions.
Human eyes are drawn to colors and patterns. You can quickly identify red from blue, and square from the circle.
Human culture is visual, including everything from art and advertisements to TV and movies.
Data visualization is another form of visual art that grabs your target audience’s interest and keeps their eyes locked on your messages. When people see a chart, they quickly see trends and outliers. If they can see something, they comprehend it quickly.
It’s storytelling with a purpose.
If you’ve ever stared at a massive spreadsheet of data and couldn’t see a trend, you know how much more effective a visualization can be.
Visualizing your ads campaign data simplifies everything from insights to setting your story right for your stakeholders.
Pay-per-click (PPC) management is part art and part science, but data always backs the most effective strategies. Data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data.
Google Ads yields a wealth of data that can inform your strategy. That data can answer simple questions:
What social channels do my clients’ leads use most?
And even more complex questions.
Can I increase my clients’ conversion value while reducing their ad budget?
The answers depend on your clients’ PPC ad campaign data.
Let’s dive into the money-saving benefits.
Data visualization helps in identifying patterns and trends of user interaction with your client’s ad campaigns.
Furthermore, it reveals how users consume your content on a large scale.
Seasoned PPC managers base decisions on those use patterns and trends. Data visualization makes those patterns and trends clear and comprehensible.
Consider, for example, PPC traffic and sales revenue. Say your clients’ sales from paid search have decreased over the last three months, but traffic from paid search has increased.
Naturally, you want to know why.
A visualization of the trends for traffic and sales revenue can help you start to uncover why, so you can adjust your strategy and tactics based on data, not on a hunch.
Data sets in search engine marketing (SEM), such as those involving keywords, can reach a multitude of target audiences, depending on the number of campaigns running.
Good visualization can distill your data into a chart you can grasp almost at a glance, as opposed to a massive spreadsheet you’d take hours to get significant insights.
Let’s take keyword data as an example.
Assume your goal is to decrease your PPC spending. You could begin by comparing PPC traffic from certain keywords to your organic search rankings for those keywords.
Imagine looking on an Excel spreadsheet at all the keywords your clients rank organically vis-a-vis ad spend.
You would find it hard to distill the data and discover opportunities to minimize ad budget wastage.
Ideally, you don’t want to spend on keywords attracting substantial organic traffic.
A chart showing the same data helps you see the keywords that offer an opportunity for minimizing PPC spend and shifting focus for those keywords to organic search strategy.
Remember, you need to justify your ad budgets, typically to non-PPC managers, i.e., your clients.
Show your stakeholders the data to help them understand your work – and to show them your success.
You probably lack the time and inclination to study a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and data points.
Time is often a luxury to PPC strategists because there’s always something to track in the highly unpredictable Google Ads platform.
You need to show your clients visual charts to communicate meaningful and persuasive stories.
Visual charts always impress more than numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.
Gut instinct should never guide a PPC strategy.
When data guides your strategy, you make the most out of your clients’ ad budgets.
Visualizing trends and distilling data into useful graphs, such as a Comparison Bar Chart, leads to better-informed and more effective strategies in your search engine marketing (SEM) ad agency.
This blog will provide you with time-saving and amazing steps that you can easily remember to visualize your PPC comparison data using Excel.
As earlier said, Excel is one of the most accessible tools for PPC data analysis and visualization among growing paid search ad agencies.
The spreadsheet organizes data in columns and rows. Each cell can accommodate different forms of data, such as texts and numbers.
Excel can analyze marketing data and generate basic visual insights using its built-in charts. Essentially, it’s popular because of the following reasons:
This makes spreadsheets an accessible option for PPC agencies scaling fast and don’t have time to train new employees to use the app.
While Excel may be sufficient for growing PPC ad agencies in the very early stages, these advantages are often short-lived. Over time, Excel can become more trouble than it’s worth.
Even for small and medium-sized paid search ad agencies, visualizing data through spreadsheets, such as Excel is at best unproductive and at worst downright dangerous for a variety of reasons.
Now let’s discuss some of the disadvantages of using Excel in visualizing your PPC ads campaign data.
Excel has potentially money-draining weaknesses that could consume your time unproductively and still produce undesirable results.
Essentially, it takes a considerable amount of time to visualize your PPC data using Excel without the help of highly efficient and specialized third-party add-ins.
The last thing you need, as a PPC manager, is a data visualization tool that limits your ability to make maximum use of your massive data.
You don’t want to miss the climax.
In light of the Excel revelations above, what’s the solution?
Well, there’s an intelligent and highly affordable Excel add-in that provides in-depth insights in a timely fashion.
This sensational tool accomplishes the mission by diving deeper into your massive search engine marketing (SEM) campaign data to help you fill in the gaps in your story swiftly.
This Excel add-in is called ChartExpo.
ChartExpo is a fabulous data visualization tool that comes as an add-in for Excel.
Essentially, it turns your Excel into a fantastic data visualization companion capable of simplifying communication and reporting with your stakeholders (clients and colleagues).
It’s cheaper than Starbucks.
To Get Started with ChartExpo for Excel add-in, follow the Simple and Easy Steps Below.
Take a look at the sample PPC data for a Campaign
Let’s compare the impression share across the 3 devices (Tablet, desktop, and tablet) in various ad groups a campaign to identify an opportunity.
Visualizing this data can help when it comes to optimizing the bidding process and cost per click (CPC).
Without visualizing your data, it’s time-consuming to uncover the best and worst-performing devices for effective targeting and cutting cost per acquisition (CPA) in the long term.
Let’s power up our ChartExpo add-in for Excel for quick and easy visualization.
I’ll use a Stacked Bar Chart to compare performance across the 3 devices and ad groups with regard to ad impression share.
Remember to highlight the data on the Excel sheet you’re using for visualization.
Follow the instructions ChartExpo is giving.
Each chart has a set of different requirements. Some charts, such as Stacked Bar Chart require one metric and two dimensions.
You don’t need to know the requirements of each of the 50-plus charts on ChartExpo.
The highly intelligent and intuitive ChartExpo will tell you the number of metrics and corresponding dimensions needed for a particular chart.
The best-performing ad groups are 1.1 and 2.2, respectively, across the 3 devices (tablet, mobile, and desktop). The worst performing and money-draining ad groups are 5.1, 3.1,1.2, 2.1, 4.2, and 4.3.
Excel is one of the most popular data visualization tools among growing PPC ad agencies due to its responsiveness, and ease of use.
However, it’s time-consuming and mentally exhausting to visualize your campaign data on Excel. Besides, it lacks an in-depth visualization library tailor-made purposely for pay-per-click (PPC) management.
You need a third-party add-in to turn Excel into an intuitive data visualization tool.
Based on the weaknesses of Excel and the vital importance of visualization, you need an affordable tool to get hold of the insights to optimize your clients’ ad campaigns for maximum desired goals at minimal costs.
This is where the $10 a month ChartExpo with a free 7-day trial comes to your rescue.
You are just a one step away, Sign-up for ChartExpo today to visualize your clients’ campaign data using 50-plus custom, revolutionary, affordable, and easy-to-read charts for easy communication with your significant stakeholders.
You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying ChartExpo today.
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