Measuring Your Ad Campaign To Ensure Success

In this guest article by Lamia Lee, Vice President of Measurement – APAC, Lucid, she discusses the 5 C’s of measuring ad campaigns in order to guarantee success.

With so many ways to engage consumers today – whether through digital, online, print and broadcast – the potential to develop highly creative and relevant advertising campaigns has never been greater.

Great campaigns are long lasting, iconic and can bring so much value to a brand. Think iconic Australian ad campaigns like Mortein’s Louie the Fly, Vegemite and Cadbury which continue to resonate with Australian audiences. Unfortunately, an oversaturated industry causes campaigns to fall short of expectations, or go missed altogether.

An effective advertising campaign can attract new customers, improve brand perception and increase sales. Measuring advertising effectiveness helps companies understand both the impact and reach of their campaigns, and allows them to find ways to optimise. It can help determine what is and isn’t working about your advertising strategies, such as frequency of exposure or actual ad creative and messaging.

Below are five reasons why measuring every campaign can bring refinement and lessons which can hit the mark every time:

1. Cost: Measure Ad Effectiveness to Get the Most from Your Budget

You’ve heard it a million times, you’ve got to spend money to make money. For ad campaign measurement, it is no different. By using a media measurement solution to see the impact your ad campaign is having, you can identify the areas of your campaign that are performing or maybe are not performing and respond accordingly.

For example you may notice that your entire campaign budget has been spent on one website, indicating you may not be grabbing your relevant audience. Whereas another website may be performing better than expected, signifying the need to focus more attention there. You also have the data to back up as to why one website was a more effective outlet than another.

2. Consumer: Ensure Ad Messaging, Creatives, and Placement Are Appropriate for Your Audience

There is a perfect consumer for every brand out in the world.

Measuring your campaigns can provide insight into the interests and behaviours of your ideal consumer. It keeps your messaging aligned with your consumers’ values and can even uncover a completely new audience you may not have considered!

3. Calamities: Use Advertising Measurement to Recover from Missteps

Calamities are notable mistakes with your campaign; it could be a small mistake, such as a misspelled word or badly punctuated sentence. Or perhaps there’s a much bigger problem like an unconscious bias that filters into a campaign or glaring mistakes that are only discovered once a campaign has been exposed enough times.

By testing creatives ahead of a launch, companies can utilise a soft launch to see results almost instantly with a pre-campaign measurement solution and adjust as needed. By simply measuring ad effectiveness, you have the ability to avoid costly mistakes such as spending even more money pulling a campaign or damaging their brand reputation.

4. Coordination: Fuse Campaigns with Your Brand Identity

It’s important for brands to align and fuse their advertising efforts with their brand identity. Building a brand or a brand reputation can take years, especially those who have earned recognition not just in their field of expertise but also more widely. All that work means brands will go through serious lengths to keep their identity secure.

By measuring a media project, you can gain a thorough understanding of how audiences feel, think and ultimately respond to your campaign and brand. These insights can help refine your messaging or prompt a deeper discussion around your brand’s image.

Aligning your brand to a consumer’s values is such a strong way to make your brand memorable and iconic. A measurement solution can give you that support. Nike is a great example of a company with a strong brand identity. ‘Just Do It’ is synonymous with motivation and having the drive to keep going or even just get started. Nike has diverse campaigns and creatives across different mediums with a consistent theme and message.

5. Cultivate: Improve Your Strategy with Each Campaign

Learning and developing is an ongoing process and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), it’s not something you can perfect. Campaign measurement can help teach you and your team ways to create a brilliant advertising campaign. It can be a tool to share with new starters, experienced creatives and everyone in between to highlight consumers changes, needs and wants.

As you begin to build the campaigns you’ll be running the rest of the year, don’t forget to include a measurement strategy considering the 5 C’s — Cost, Consumer, Calamities, Coordination and Cultivate – if you want to ensure success.