There are many functions within a business and each
function should have a positive effect on the bottom line
of any company, but the advertisements that your marketing
department place are the 'front-line' in the war to get
prospects to your website - so how do you determine how
efficient your advertisements are?
Do you simply look at the number of sales and enquiries or
do you look deeper and try to evaluate why people have come.
Of course, to determine how effective our advertising is we
should look at a number of things...
Media type - this can have a big effect on where you should
be placing your advertising bucks next time, for
example...you may have received a ton of prospects from
Campaign #1, but very few closing deals, yet Campaign #2
brought in fewer but more targeted prospects and a higher
closing ratio as it was a different medium
Your budget - do you need to spend $100,000's to get great
results? If you are a very large corporation you may need
to, however if you think smart, there are literally
hundreds of marketing weapons that cost very little but can
bring in massive results. At the end of the day, your
advertisement needs to make a profit
What was your objective - did the advertisement do what you
wanted it to do? If it was to increase brand awareness,
then you need to factor in surveyed results to see if
awareness in your target market has increased. If you
wanted a direct response, then was this response acted on?
Consistency - was this advert part of a series or a
one-off? If it was part of a series - how much better has
it performed than the previous 'control'. Are you
consistently improving? Your target market - is your target
market responding to your advertising or do you need to
adjust the demographics...
It's useful to plan a meeting (regular if the campaign runs
over a long period of time) to go through the data that you
have collected for each account and measure the performance
of the advertisement. You should begin to see a clearer
view as to how efficient or not your advertising and
marketing spend is.
As with all advertising and marketing...you should always
test, test, test!
Determine a 'control' for your advertisement. In other
words, define all the areas that you need to address
(headline, sub-head, body etc...) and make sure that the
advert works. Place the advertisement, record the details
as explained above and then change one thing for the next
campaign you run.
That one thing could be the headline or the sub-heading of
your advertising. Whatever it is, run the ad and then check
the performance and the efficiency of each campaign.
If the original control version performs better, then keep
it. If the new ad' performs better, then that becomes the
new control - and so you go on...
Look at your advertisements as tools for your business.
they should never be viewed as 'luxuries' that you can play
around with - in general they cost too much. Make them work
by determining the efficiency of your advertising and you
will make the profit. Determine the overall efficiency by
how much profit you are making, then keep and improve the
best adverts and bin the poor performers.
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Michael Hemmins is a successful home business owner and
Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. Michael is also the
webmaster of http://www.MyProfit-Generator.com - The Ideas
For A Home Based Business Website. Why not join Michael's
free newsletter at
http:://www.MyProfit-Generator.com/join.html and get your
free copy of his 325pg eBook on how to build your
successful online business.
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