What is PPC?
PPC is a discipline within general marketing and the word PPC is short for pay-per-click. It’s categorized as a “paid marketing” channel where marketers and companies pay for each click they get from a service.
The most famous PPC ad platform is Google Ads where marketers pay for each click they get in the search results of Google.
PPC is different from fx. “paid social” where ads are most often paid based on CPM (cost-per-mille) or more known as cost per 1000 impressions.
Why should people in PPC work with OKR?
PPC is a highly data-driven discipline and this is one of the reasons why it fits perfectly into the OKR discipline. Everything can be measured and performance is a top priority for PPC marketers and specialists.
OKR helps organizations and individuals set ambitious goals and break them down into small, achievable initiatives. Using that with PPC is a great fit. That’s why we’ve compiled this page of PPC OKR examples - to set the stage for how PPC people can work with OKRs.
What is a great PPC OKR example?
Objective: Ramp up profitable AdWords campaign
Key Result: Increase spending from $100k to $200k while maintaining ROAS 3
What are the requirements for a PPC OKR?
Every OKR in PPC should focus on being the following:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Results-oriented
Time-bound
OKR Criteria: Specific
Your OKR should be specific enough so that when other people within the organization, that aren’t necessarily on your team, know what you’re working on. No one ever got punished for having an OKR that was a bit too long. Instead, writing fuzzy or unclear OKRs is a definite no-go.
OKR Criteria: Measurable
Because OKRs are usually working with specific metrics, it’s a lot easier to check the box that the OKR is measurable. We measure things that are relevant to progress within SaaS.
OKR Criteria: Achievable
It’s important to have achievable OKRs. They should always be ambitious, but nothing is more demotivating than unachievable goals. A rule of thumb is that the chance of achieving a Key Result should be around 50% from the start. If you reach 70% and above, it’s considered a success.
OKR Criteria: Results-oriented
Being focused on results is a very important aspect of OKR. It’s so important, that we’ve dedicated an entire section to describing why you should focus on outcomes over outputs below.
OKR Criteria: Time-bound
A key part of defining a goal is also defining when you’re expecting it to be met. For OKR, your goals are usually divided into different cycles and your goals should of course be reached within the end of the cycle.
How do PPC people achieve the OKR example?
The short answer: great initiatives. Initiatives are the day-to-day tasks and experiments that help you achieve your key results (read more about initiatives here).
Think of it like this. Your PPC key results are very ambitious goals you’re trying to achieve. It won’t be easy (otherwise you haven’t been ambitious enough or you’ve just described initiatives), but you’ll have time to fail.
Every initiative you should be based on a hypothesis that succeeding with it will drive you closer to reaching your goals in PPC.
How to get started with OKR in PPC
Here are the next steps you should take to get ready to use OKR in your PPC work:
Get inspiration from the examples PPC OKR examples mentioned on this page
Figure out the goals and strategies of your organization
Think about how you can contribute to those goals with PPC
Set ambitious targets and brainstorm initiatives that might help you get there