Traditional advertising methods aren’t working as well in today’s digital world. There are still some print products that are great at getting your message out there, but how do you know they are working? Twenty years ago, advertising was easy. You had a sale – you placed an ad in the newspaper and ran it on the radio — and the customers came through your door. While print media still works — especially a niche publication reaching a specialized audience — it’s still difficult to measure the success of your campaign.
That’s why digital advertising gives businesses more bang for their buck. Digital advertising is constantly growing and evolving. As we learn more about consumers, their research process and buying habits, we are able to adopt a strategy that will get the right advertising message in front of the right people. Most of what happens during a digital advertising campaign may seem like magic, and the terminology gets to be quite complicated to someone who isn’t familiar with some of the methods. So it’s important to start from the finish line and work your way backward.
Digital isn’t Traditional Media
As stated earlier, digital isn’t traditional media, so it makes sense that the process would be different. By working your way backward, you are able to set a defined goal at the beginning of the campaign to get the results you need. For example, if you want a certain number of leads generated by your online campaign, that would be your defined goal and the campaign would focus on generating those leads. To determine the success of your campaign, you would want to evaluate it and measure your results.
Evaluating Your Digital Campaign
The importance of evaluating your digital campaign can’t be stressed enough. By looking at the reporting from the service you placed your digital ads through, you can determine whether a certain creative is working, if you need to serve more or less impressions to a certain demographic, if you need to adjust the percent of money you’ve invested in different digital efforts and go with the one getting more results … and so on. Purchasing digital advertising can be complicated, and you should be buying it from someone you trust. And that agency or company should be held accountable for helping you measure the campaign’s effectiveness.
Start With Google Analytics
How does it work? There is a lot of reporting available to you. Figuring out what you need and what it all means can sometimes be confusing. The best tip we can offer you is to put Google Analytics on your website. If you don’t currently have it running on your site, it’s free and easy. Your web developer can place it for you, and you can track how your visitors are getting to your site. Tracking where they come from can help you determine where to spend your digital advertising dollars. It will also give you a point of reference of where your website traffic started prior to an advertising campaign, and if it increased over the course of the campaign. If your end goal was to get more visitors to your website and the campaign increased traffic by 15 percent, your campaign was effective.
Determine How You Will Measure Success
You can also measure the success of your campaign by reading the reports generated by the type of service you are using. For example, Facebook advertising has wonderfully detailed reporting, and it’s very easy to read. You can look at what ads are performing the best, and change up the ones that aren’t.
Display advertising through programmatic purchases — including retargeting, are also able to give detailed reporting where ad sizes, creatives, and impressions can be evaluated and reporting is always included in these buys.
Use Lead Generation to Track
If you are running a campaign strictly for lead generation, placing call tracking on your website or landing page will help you track the number of phone calls you’ve received, and a landing page will capture your leads with a form. Calls are tracked by unique callers and repeat callers. Landing pages can track the number of people visiting your page and the number of submissions you’re receiving.
Test Your Campaigns
AB Testing on various forms of digital advertising is always a good idea. You can evaluate the campaign showing the most progress, then use the version getting the most responses.
Running digital campaigns can be tricky – knowing how much money needs to be spent in which type of advertising, but luckily, evaluating and showing results has never been easier. With digital advertising, you can get a return on investment if you manage the campaign properly. And more digital solutions are cropping up as technology advances.
If you have any questions or need help evaluating your website, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll be happy to help you find a solution to fit your digital needs.
