Post-Testing Methods: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Ad Campaigns

05 February 2024 - Expense Management Software Credit Cards Investing Business Solutions

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Running ad campaigns can be expensive, so it’s important to evaluate their effectiveness afterwards. Here are some of the top methods for post-testing ad campaigns to see what worked and what can be improved.

1. Analyze Campaign Reach and Impressions

One of the first things to look at is the overall reach of the campaign. How many people saw the ads? The number of impressions indicates how often your ads were served. High reach and impressions suggest your targeting and budget is allowing the ads to be shown widely. You want your campaign to achieve sufficient reach among your target audience in the early stages.

Google Analytics provides impression and reach data to evaluate campaign exposure. Adjust can track ad performance across platforms like Facebook and Google.

2. Evaluate Click-Through-Rates

Click-through rate (CTR) is easy to calculate but important – it’s the ratio of ad clicks to impressions. A high CTR signals your messaging and creative encouraged clicks from the right audience. Low CTR means your ads aren’t resonating or visible to the right buyers.

Review CTRs for ad groups, networks, creatives and placements. Identify high performing combinations to replicate and low performers to eliminate going forward. Continually refine your online ads to drive engagement.

Instapage and Unbounce provide landing page templates and tools to optimize visitor conversion rates after they click from an ad.

3. Measure Conversions and ROI

Clicks alone don’t pay the bills. You ultimately care about conversions and return on ad spend. Did visitors who clicked through take meaningful actions – like free trial signups or purchases? What revenue and profit did the campaign generate relative to cost?

Use analytics to connect conversion activity to channels, ads and keywords. Discover what is truly driving performance. Link CRM data for richer insights into lifetime customer value from the acquisition campaign over time.

Mixpanel tracks user behaviors to identify conversion funnels. Profitwell measures subscription business metrics like MRR and LTV.

4. Conduct Multi-Touch Attribution

The buyer journey is complex. Your ads are likely one of many brand touchpoints influencing conversion. Multi-touch attribution analyzes the customer path and gives credit to multiple interactions that contributed. Using rules-based or algorithmic attribution versus last-click often better represents channel influence, highlighting the impact of display and video ads before a final paid search click for example.

Adobe Analytics has advanced attribution capabilities to model channel contributions. LeanData attributes deals to various go-to-market campaigns in CRM.

5. Evaluate Against Success Benchmarks

The final step is comparing campaign results to benchmarks. Some key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate include:

Cost Per Click
Click-Through Rate
Cost Per Acquisition
Conversion Rate
Lifetime Value

Assess against historical baselines, media plan goals and wider industry averages. Identify winning strategies to amplify and underperforming areas for improvement. Continually optimize towards efficiency, scale and profitability targets.

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Google Analytics is a robust web analytics service by Google that provides detailed insights into website and app traffic. It offers valuable data on user behavior, site performance, and conversion metrics, enabling businesses to make informed decisions to optimize their online presence.
Adjust is a mobile marketing platform that provides analytics and measurement solutions. It helps businesses track and optimize their mobile app performance, user acquisition campaigns, and in-app events to enhance overall marketing strategies.
Instapage is a powerful landing page platform that allows businesses to create personalized, high-converting landing pages. With features like A/B testing and analytics, Instapage helps optimize marketing campaigns and improve conversion rates.
Unbounce is a landing page builder designed to create and optimize landing pages without the need for coding. It provides A/B testing and analytics features, empowering businesses to refine their landing pages for maximum effectiveness.
Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform that focuses on user-centric insights. It helps businesses track user interactions with their digital products, enabling data-driven decision-making to improve user experiences and engagement.
Profitwell is a subscription and pricing optimization platform. It provides analytics and insights into subscription-based businesses, helping them understand and improve their pricing strategies and overall subscription performance.
Adobe Analytics is a comprehensive analytics solution that offers in-depth insights into customer behavior across various digital channels. It empowers businesses to measure, analyze, and optimize their digital experiences for enhanced customer engagement.
LeanData is a platform that specializes in lead-to-account matching and routing solutions. It helps businesses streamline their lead management processes, ensuring leads are routed to the right accounts and improving overall sales efficiency.

Conclusion

Evaluating advertising performance is critical for maximizing ROI. Move beyond vanity metrics to surface true effectiveness using techniques like multi-channel contribution analysis and value-based KPIs. Connect campaign data into your CRM and analytics tools for greater commercial context. Keep testing and optimizing based on insights uncovered. With the proper post-testing methods, your next awareness, acquisition and retargeting campaigns will hit key benchmarks and strategically boost business growth.

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