Before starting any promotional campaign on the Internet, it is necessary to clearly define the purpose of this activity and define the most important metrics of the marketing campaign. Simply ask yourself what must happen for a given campaign to be considered a success, i.e. what result we want to achieve. There are many metrics to rely on, but to get the best picture of the situation, we first need to define the type of campaign.
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The most important metrics of an online marketing campaign
We can distinguish two basic types or goals of a marketing campaign; building brand awareness or persuading potential customers to perform a specific action.
If you focus solely on building brand awareness in your marketing activities, it is likely that you will use metrics that determine the number of ad impressions.
Campaigns aimed at obtaining a specific action should measure the number of clicks, conversion rate or sales growth. Below, I list a few more parameters and explain their importance in measuring the effectiveness of an online marketing campaign.
Building brand awareness
Brand awareness campaigns are usually long-term activities. The goal of this type of campaign is to achieve the greatest possible reach and communicate the main message of your company. A branding campaign should consist of a regular, consistent message that highlights the strengths of the brand or product itself. These types of activities build the company’s reputation, and this has a direct impact on increasing the value of products or services sold.
When planning an online brand promotional campaign, you should focus on the following indicators:
Reach: You want your content to reach as many audiences as possible. Reach is defined as the total number of people who saw your ad.
Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown. Impressions are very often the primary measurement metric for so-called “display” ads. The greater the number of views, the greater the chance of building brand awareness. The main emphasis is on the reach of the advertising campaign.
Direct response campaign
Campaigns aimed at triggering a specific action in the recipient have a completely different goal than building brand awareness. In this case, the customer’s direct response to the published content is expected. Ads usually contain a call-to-action, and their main goal is to persuade the client to act immediately. It can be a purchase, subscribing to a mailing list, or leaving a phone number for later contact from the company.
The published content contains a special tracking code, thanks to which the ad publisher knows exactly which medium the query or sale comes from. In the case of a brand-building campaign, the advertiser is unlikely to find out which communication channel contributed to increasing brand recognition; unless, of course, the advertising campaign has the desired effect.
The basic indicators recording the desired customer reaction include:
Clicks: The number of people who clicked on the advertising link. Here, too, we’re relying on as many ad impressions as possible, but to get a direct response, we need to convert those impressions into valuable clicks.
Click-through rate (CTR): This is the number of clicks divided by the number of times your ad is shown. In order to trigger a certain action, it is very important that people click on your ad when they see it. So you must strive to achieve the highest possible CTR. For this purpose, the ads must be targeted at a strictly defined group of recipients.
Sales: means going through the sales funnel and making a purchase.
Summary
The most important step in creating an online marketing campaign is figuring out what your purpose is. Therefore, we should know whether the campaign will be focused on building brand awareness or on the direct reaction of the potential recipient of the advertisement.
The indicators described above will allow you to closely monitor the campaign and measure its effects. Monitoring activities should be carried out at every stage of the campaign to correct or define the reach of the advertisement, if necessary. Tracking the progress of the campaign will allow you to improve the efficiency of activities, avoid unnecessary costs, or minimize possible losses.