In the enVisioning Success podcast episode, Cutting Costs and Getting Rid of Waste, co-hosts Laura and Julia provide anecdotes and advice on assessing costs and stepping back from just throwing money at the problem. This includes things like your marketing budget and ad spend. But how do you assess the success or failure of your digital advertising, and if you’re spending too much on ads and need to cut back? Below, we review the questions to ask yourself (or your marketing department) to get back on track.
How Do You Assess Ad Success?
So, before you can decide if your advertising is effective, you’ve got to have yardsticks for success. Hopefully, these have been set up for some time, but let’s recap them below:
- What Is the Goal of Your Ad? From driving traffic to a specific page on your website to making users take action on the advertising platform (fill out a form, engage, etc.), all advertising has a goal. What was it?
- How Do You Track Success? Knowing your goal, how was success tracked? On many platforms, this tracking is known as conversion. Some platforms, like Facebook and Google Ads, allow you to insert tracking software to create these conversions when these goals occur.
- Do You Follow Up? Once a goal or conversion has been reached, does that translate into a lead or sold product? This is often where sales and marketing disconnect, so it’s vital that the sales team follows through and keeps track of what does and does not generate leads.
Making Your Ad Spend Go Further
Once you’ve gotten a handle on what your ads were supposed to do and what they’ve actually done, it’s time to assess what did and didn’t work. The goal here is to use analysis and marketing knowledge to make smart decisions—this isn’t spaghetti marketing.
Know Where Your Customers Are
All marketing starts with an ideal client profile—the kind of customer you’re trying to attract. Looking at demographic information, did you attract them? If not, you might be on the wrong platform for your business or even industry.
Know What They Like to See
You might not be using the right targeting. Perhaps you need better graphics for ads, better keywords (for ads or for your content), or just better landing pages (as we talk about in our blog, Do Better Landing Pages Make for More Effective Google Ads?).
Try All the Tools Available
All ad platforms have different types of ads—you may have to try another to find your customers and show them what they like. Google alone has over half-a-dozen options, from search ads to display ads on third-party websites to video ads on YouTube.
About the enVisioning Success Podcast
This article is based on topics discussed in enVisioning Success, our weekly podcast hosted by Vision Advertising CEO Laura DiBenedetto and COO Julia Becker Collins. In it, they discuss all things business and marketing, from lead generation to leadership. Find us on PodBean to download from your platform of choice, or subscribe to our mailing list to get new episodes and other news delivered directly to your inbox. Interested in working with Vision Advertising? Learn more about our services and contact us today.
