Advertisements can be a great way to attract leads for your products and services. The more effective your ad campaign is, the greater it's impact will be on your sales. Something that I've found though, is that a large number of small businesses have no idea how to evaluate their advertising campign's effectiveness. Some common questions that arise are:
- how long should I measure the campaign for?
- what are important indicators for evaluating an ad's success, beyond sales generated?
- should I track leads generated that don't convert to an immediate sale?
In addition to questioning sales, advertising agencies may also try to evaluate less tangible metrics like how much your ad resonated with your audience. However, there is even more to consider when trying to determine how successful an advertising campaign is. In order to know how to evaluate advertising campaign effectiveness, you need to know the ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘how’, of advertising.
The ‘What’ of Campaign Effectiveness
The 'what' referrs to the overall objective of your ad campaign. Was the goal to intice product trial, remove misconceptions, providing support for the salespeople, remind prospects, or gain awareness? Depending on the purpose of your campaign, advertising research may need to be conducted to evaluate success. For different types of advertisements, the measures used for determining success might change.
During the research phase it's important to set targets for each objective and then evaluate whether or not each has been met. For instance, if the objectives includes sales, then with a good CRM tool, it could be pretty straightforward to determine how much sales was generated as a direct result of the ad. Aside from measuring direct impressions and conversion though, it could be important to watch the increase or decrease in sales over time, both before and after the campaign.
The ‘When’ And ‘How’ of Campaign Effectiveness
Aside from what to measure, timing can be even more critical. Should you measure before, during, or after its execution? The answer is all of the above! Pre-testing is done before running the campaign with a subset of your target audience. This involves a focus group so that their reactions, likes, and dislikes can be gauged. After running the campaign, post testing should also be carried out to evaluate the level of effectiveness vs. your initial targets. Some popular metrics assessed in post testing include attitude or image changes, usage rate, sales data statistical analysis, and any usage changes. Also, after your advertisment has been executed, it's really critical to document any meta-learnings so you know how to change your future campaigns.
While many sources have indicated recall to not be an effective way to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign, many agencies make use of this. They believe that if an ad is seen as well as remembered, then this can be a great indication of its rate of success.
While there are different techniques on how to evaluate advertising campaign effectiveness, the measurement of real effectiveness of an ad may still prove to be somewhat elusive. However, one great way to capture traffic generated and then leads is to make your website the central point of your sales funnel. By setting up unique URLs for each campaign and using UTM codes effectively, you can leverage the power of tools like Google Analytics to track your campaigns more effectively.
To learn more about using UTM codes, and how to write better copy that generates sales, download our free guide "How to Create Killer Content" by entering your information below: