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Was your ad campaign a success?

How do we know if an ad campaign was a success (or not)? The answer should be obvious, but in reality this may not be the case.

Keep these 6 things in mind when planning your next ad campaign:

1. Focus on just one goal. You're probably trying to achieve a number of goals with your ad campaign such as: Web sales, offline sales, new leads, and brand awareness. Instead, just focus on one goal, otherwise success can be hard to measure let alone achieve.

2. Set measurable objectives. Set your ad campaign objectives with that one goal in mind. But not squishy objectives. For example, "increase" is okay but "increase 20%" is better. Even better is: "increase the daily traffic coming from Yahoo search marketing by 20% over the next 30-days". You get the idea! Make your objectives specific so they can be measurable.

3. Figure out how you'll measure performance. Let's say you want to increase brand awareness by 10% for people living in Portland. How will you measure this... Web site surveys, phone polls, change in Web traffic... And what will be the "baseline" that you measure against... Think this through before your ad campaign begins so you know what you're measuring against.

4. Get access to the data. Make sure you have access to all the results data. For example, if you need the sales team to provide info on how many leads converted into orders, then confirm in advance that they'll collect this data and send it to you when you need it. in their sales pitch. And if your budget is a lot less than $10,000, you may need to focus on performance, vertical or local ad networks. But don't worry, these can work well too!

5. Don't forget seasonality. Did your ad campaign really "blow doors off" or is it just that time of year? Measure your results against the right time periods, and use trends and averages to adjust for big data swings. Factor in "seasonality" when defining your objectives and what you'll measure against.

6. Check (and double check) that everything is working How do you measure a campaign's success if you've just discovered a broken link on the landing page? and no one knows when the problem started"Sound familiar" Check reports daily and investigate anything that looks like a problem.

Do this homework in advance, and you'll spend less time wondering how your ad campaign performed, and more time making your next campaign a big success!

 
 
 
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