Facebook reported, in 2019, that 6 million businesses were advertising on the platform. On top of Facebook ads, there is Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn advertising and of course, Google Ads. It’s safe to say that digital advertising is not going anywhere and allows much more control than traditional media. Before you set up your campaign, you should think about the best way of measuring ad success.
Setting up an advert on socials, or a search ad can be very time consuming. You may even have a whole team involved in creating a landing page, writing the ad, choosing imagery or creating videos, deciding on the budget and targeting your ad to reach the right people. But once you have done all this, how do you decide if your ad worked effectively?
Of course, how you measure the success of your campaign depends on your goals. Are you looking to sell a product, have people sign up to an online event or raise brand awareness? We have covered some of the different indicators you can use to measure the success of your advertising.
Impressions, Clicks, Traffic
No matter what your goals are, these metrics are important. They show how many people have seen your advert and how many people have clicked on it. If your ad is not being seen it is likely a problem with your targeting being too specific or your budget being too low. It is also worth checking that your ad is not stuck in review, that your payment method is working and that you haven’t reached your spend limit.
If you’re getting impressions but not clicks you should look at improving your copy or your imagery.
Cost Per Click
When measuring ad success, a big focus is often put on Cost Per Click (CPC). CPC lets you know how much you are spending to get a click on your ad. You ideally want to get this cost as low as possible.
You can reduce costs by refining your targeting to make sure you are hitting the right audience. This becomes easier with the more advertising you do, as you can refine your targeting based on which demographics interacted well with previous ads. For Facebook advertising, you can use a handy tool called “lookalike audience” which allows you to reach new people who are similar to those already interacting with your content.
There are a number of other strategies you can work on to reduce CPC varying between advertising platforms. These include refining your keywords and adjusting your bidding strategy.
Conversions
Conversions are one of the most important things to measure – they are what you are running your ad for. What counts as a conversion varies depending on your goals so could be link clicks, form completions, a call to your business or a purchase of a product. In your stats and analytics, you can see how many conversions your ad got and usually how much each conversion cost you.
Return on Investment
You have put budget behind the ad and of course, you want to see if you’ve made any return on your hard-earned cash. Return on Investment (ROI) will not only show you if you’re getting your money’s worth but is also likely to drive you to improve your ads. If you measure ROI over time, you can check that you are refining your ads strategy effectively.
If all this sounds like hard work, we’ve got you covered! At Blue Sword, we will work with you to find out your business goals and create a digital advertising strategy that works towards them. As well as digital advertising, we also offer organic social media marketing to grow your online presence, increase sales and improve brand awareness. Please get in touch for a chat if you’d like to discuss what we can do for you.