Success looks different for every business and every campaign. It depends on a wide range of factors, including your goals, the size of your business, and even the results of past campaigns. Do you know what success looks like for your advertising campaign? Consider these elements to get a better idea of what your campaign has accomplished.
Begin with Your Goals in Mind
In order to properly measure the success of your campaign, you need to look at the results with your goals in mind. Depending on the goals you initially set, you may look at those results very differently.
For example, imagine that you started with the goal of raising brand awareness within your community. Do you want your customers to have a better idea of who you are and what your business offers? You might have dramatically different goals than if you want to increase your sales.
Likewise, if you conduct a campaign with the goal of promoting a particular sale or product, you will want to focus on how the campaign raised sales in that particular area. You might note an increase in overall sales during this period, but that was not the initial goal of your campaign. In fact, you might notice little difference in your total sales. However, if sales of that specific product increased, your campaign has met its goal.
Starting with a solid set of goals can shape your entire campaign. Not only do your marketing efforts look different, but you’ll also find that the measurement of your success looks different, too.
Measure KPIs
A KPI, or key performance indicator, is a specific piece of information related to your campaign that you can use to track its performance. KPIs for advertising might include:
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Cost per acquisition
- Conversion rate
- Website visits
- Website visits by source
- Social media engagement, including likes, shares, or comments
- Click-through rate
- Cost per click
- Customer lifetime value
- Pageviews
- Bounce rate
- Impressions
Your KPIs will depend on the goals you set and the platforms you use for your ads. You can measure impressions based on nearly any type of campaign. On the other hand, if you aren't using your social media page as part of a specific campaign, you don't need to look at social media engagement KPIs as part of your measurements for that campaign's success.
If you're focusing on increasing new customer traffic, customer lifetime value might not have a bearing on the success of your campaign. On the other hand, some campaigns may focus specifically on raising customer lifetime value. Take a close look at your initial goals. Compare them to the KPIs you usually use to evaluate your marketing. Make sure that the two line up to help you see how each campaign accomplishes your goals.
Analyze Your Results
Once you've gathered your data, you need to analyze it based on the goals you set at the beginning of the campaign. This is the effort that will actually show you if your campaign was successful. Did you meet your initial goals? How did they compare to previous campaigns?
Keep in mind that your business's size, previous results, and industry will have a significant impact on how you determine success. There is no clear, across-the-board number that will establish the success of a failure of a campaign. You want to see positive ROI, but that may look very different for one business versus another. For example, if you run a car dealership, you might have fewer new customers than a salon, but each of your customer's first purchase with your dealership will likely have a far higher value than the purchases of customers at the salon.
The more advertising campaigns you run, the better you will be able to judge success for your business. You can use that analysis to determine what worked and what didn't. From there, you can adjust your future efforts to improve your success.
In analyzing your results, ignore the KPIs that do not relate to your goals and to your campaign. If you chose to focus on increasing customer lifetime value, for example, you might not want to worry about new customers or new visits to your store, whether physical or virtual. On the other hand, if you're focused on raising awareness and bringing in new traffic, you may want to save that analysis of customer lifetime value for a future campaign.
In order to fully understand the success or failure of a marketing campaign, you must start by measuring the right elements. If you don't know what KPIs to look for or how to effectively measure those KPIs, you may struggle to determine whether your campaign met your goals. When you start with your goals and measure the right elements, on the other hand, you'll find that you can more effectively determine what your campaign accomplished and how it relates to your advertising goals.
