Digital ad campaigns can be an effective way to spread the word about what your company, brand, or business is doing. That is why many organizations rely on campaigns for their marketing needs. The key to a successful campaign is finding the right blend of quality, engagement, and placement for your ads. The only way to know if the strategy that you are using works is to monitor performance, which is easier than ever with the freely available campaign management tools in every marketing platform. In this article, we discuss how to measure digital ad campaign performance.
Before You Begin
Before you begin measuring performance or advertising, you need to have a system in place that lets you monitor that performance. Fortunately, nearly all advertising platforms have built-in tools that let you measure specific performance stats. Some even let you print reports so that you can keep detailed records of what works and what does not, and so that you can send reports to your supervisors if necessary.
Create a Performance Check Schedule
While the stats monitoring systems can create nearly continuous reports, you do not need to check with that level of frequency. In most cases, you only need to check performance weekly. At most, you should check it daily since performance changes will likely not show on the same day. You need to give your ads time to perform and aggregate the performance data to a meaningful level.
Rather than checking every day, focus on checking once per week. This will give you a larger segment of data to work with so that you can make more informed decisions. The only exception to this may be within a short time after you deploy your digital ad campaign. Check to make sure everything is working, which includes checking to see if stats collection is working properly. Then, wait for more results.
Stats to Monitor
As you try to gauge performance, there are specific stats that you should monitor. The exact combination of stats depends on your ads, your needs, and your intentions, but there are some that every performance report should include. These stats are:
Overall Traffic
The most basic measurement of performance is the overall traffic stat. It measures the amount of traffic across all of your advertising channels. You want your overall traffic to be as high as possible, which means more people are visiting your channels. The higher the traffic, the more chances you have to convert leads into sales.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate measures how many people leave your marketing channels without further interaction. In essence, it measures the number of people that land on one of your pages, then leave without doing anything else. You want the bounce rate to be as low as possible, which means that people are seeing your pages and interacting with them. The lower the bounce rate, the more successful you are at drawing people into your advertising campaign.
Total Conversions
Total conversions measures how many people interact with your marketing campaign in a meaningful way, usually by following the CTAs throughout your advertisements. You want the total conversions metric to be as high as possible since it means that your marketing campaign is actually working the way it was intended.
New Sessions
The new sessions metrics measures how many times people come to your pages and advertisements. Specifically, it measures the total number of unique visits, even if it is by the same person over and over again. It is a measure of how many people come to the site that can be used to see if people are coming back multiple times. You want this metric to be high since it means that your page is important enough to return to.
Compare Reports
When you check your performance reports, compare them to previous reports to see trends in overall performance. You want to see consistent performance improvements. This can also be very useful if you are trying to fine-tune your advertising. Many companies use these metrics reports as a means of A/B testing advertisements.
Above All, Measure ROI
ROI (return-on-investment) is the most important metric that you can measure. This is because it is an indicator that your advertising is generating revenue like it is intended. Advertising campaigns can require a major capital investment to get started and maintain. If you are going to keep it going, then you need to know if it is working. Otherwise, your company could be wasting valuable resources on a failing campaign. Always track ROI and make changes to ensure that it is as high as possible. Otherwise, it may be time to scrap and restart the campaign.
Get Help Managing Your Digital Ad Campaigns
Planning, launching, and managing ad campaigns can be a difficult process unless you have a department that is completely dedicated to it. Fortunately, you can get help developing and managing your digital ad campaign. At KitelyTech, we work closely with companies that need help developing ads and creating campaign strategies. Call us at (800) 274 2908 for help getting your next campaign off the ground.
