Best SEM report templates for marketing teams and agencies (2024)

What is an SEM report?

An SEM report is a document that consolidates data from multiple sources (e.g., Google Ads, Bing Ads, SEMrush) to track and display key performance indicators (KPIs) (e.g., CTR, CPC, conversions), enabling teams and agencies to monitor campaign and channel performance and create presentations for clients and executives. 

SEM reports are typically created using flexible tools like Google Looker Studio, Power BI, Google Sheets, or platform-specific solutions to enable high customization and integration of multiple data sources.

What to include in an SEM report?

An actionable SEM report balances context and specificity based on the audience (executives, managers, and analysts) and their use cases.

Executive SEM reports

Executive reports for CMOs, CEOs, and clients show SEM's bottom-line impact. Reviewed weekly, monthly, or quarterly, they include:

• SEM ROI analysis: by channel, using attribution (MMM, lift analysis, multi-touch) for large budgets (≈100k/mo).
• Unit economics analysis: CAC, LTV, payback, ARPU from SEM-acquired customers
• Cohort analysis: retention, expansion, and LTV by customer cohort (sign-up period, acquisition channel)
• Add text for additional context to translate metrics for non-technical audiences. Present in slide decks and simplified Looker Studio reports.

SEM manager reports

Manager reports have cross-channel views with drill-downs to see performance by client, brand, region, team member, funnel stage, and campaign. They help align teams, define tactics, and include:

• Cross-channel reporting: overall campaign, product, client, or region reporting across channels
• Goal tracking: compare current performance vs objectives
• Audits for prioritization and spotting issues 
• Competitive analysis for channel and tactic mapping
• Keyword and audience research

Operational SEM reports

Operational reports for analysts and channel managers have granular, customizable KPIs to solve technical issues. Monitored hourly, daily, or weekly, they cover:

• PPC: budget pacing, engagement, creative performance, CPA
• Keyword performance: rankings, impressions, clicks, CPC
• Ad performance: ad copy effectiveness, quality score, ad extensions

Operational SEM reports are highly customized, built in flexible tools like Google Sheets or Looker Studio to enable data cleaning, blending, annotations, and integrating multiple sources.

How to build an SEM report?

To build an SEM report, connect your data sources, choose a template on Looker Studio or Sheets, build your queries by selecting metrics and dimensions, choose charts to visualize your data, customize the report, design and share via link, PDF or email. 

Here’s the breakdown: 

Connect data sources

Define and connect the data sources to bring to your report. Common sources are Google Ads and Bing Ads for PPC performance, SEMrush for keyword data, and CRM or E-commerce for sales data.

To connect your data sources, go to portermetrics.com, choose the data sources to bring to your report. 

You can follow these tutorials on connecting your data:

• How to connect SEM data to Google Looker Studio
• How to connect your data to Google Sheets

Choose a template

Choose from dozens of SEM report templates in Google Sheets or Looker Studio, designed for use cases like PPC monitoring, budget pacing, funnels, and creative performance. 

Learn to copy Looker Studio templates. 

While templates are the starting point. Make them specific for your business or agency. Map your specific metrics, especially custom conversions, CRM contact data, and all the fields and metrics that you define as "conversions" and "revenue".

Depending on your reporting tool—Google Sheets or Google Looker Studio, pick any of the dozens of templates created by our team and customers to solve your SEM reporting use cases, such as PPC monitoring, budget pacing, funnels, and creative performance. 

Select metrics, dimensions, and charts

Once your report template is downloaded, you may 1)modify it or 2) create a blank page to build it from scratch. Whatever the case, setting up a query always follows these steps: 

1. Select the data source and the account connected to it
2. Choose metrics (e.g. Clicks, spend, Sessions, ROAS, etc.). 
3. Choose breakdowns to segment your data (e.g. by date, campaign name, ad image, etc.)

You can follow these tutorials on adding data to your reports

• Calculated fields
• Charts
• Data blending
• Grouping and tagging

Design

To make your SEM reports truly white-label you can add logos, colors, fonts, and styling to mirror your brand. 

Follow these tutorials to design your SEM reports:

• Design reports on Looker Studio
• Best practices on designing SEM reports

Share

Share your SEM reports via links, PDF, schedule emails, and control permissions.

KPIs to include in an SEM report?

SEM reports should include a mix of funnel—visibility, engagement, conversion—, efficiency, effectiveness, revenue, and cost metrics and KPIs to fully understand the performance of SEM campaigns towards business goals. They include:

SEM funnel KPIs measure the buying process (from the marketer perspective), regardless of the channel: 

• Visibility metrics: impressions, reach, ad views
• Engagement metrics: clicks, CTR, ad interactions
• Conversion metrics: custom conversions, leads, purchases, key events

Efficiency KPIs compare your SEM outputs to the cost, including:

• Visibility: CPM (Cost per Mille)
• Engagement: CPC (Cost per Click)
• Conversion: CPA (Cost per Acquisition), CPP (Cost per Purchase) 

Effectiveness KPIs compare the input with the output from one funnel stage to another

• Visibility: Frequency
• Engagement: CTR, engagement rate
• Conversion: Conversion rate

Sales and cost KPIs show the bottom-line impact of your SEM performance:

• Sales: customers, revenue
• Cost: ad spend, OPEX, payroll
• Efficiency: ROI, ROAS, CAC
• Effectiveness: AOV, ACV

To analyze these SEM KPIs, segment them by:

• Channel: paid, search, Google Ads vs Bing Ads

• Time: Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly

• Campaign: funnel stage, objective

• Business: client, branch, region

• Audience: geo, tech, demographics, interests, behavior, placement

• Content: ad copy, format, keyword