Paid advertising grew from $83 billion to $92.4 billion from 2016 to 2017.
This single figure is more than sufficient to explain that businesses are not shy toward spending on paid advertising.
When it comes to paid advertising, there is a lot that you need to consider. This is exactly what we are going to discuss in this post here. We are going to talk about some of the key metrics that you as a business owner ought to measure while promoting and advertising your business.
So, without beating too much around the bush, let us get straight away to the point and take a look at those metrics that we are talking about.
Reach and Impression
These are the two lifelines of any ad campaign. If you are not versed with the terms, “reach” is basically the number of unique users who saw the advertisement and “impressions” is the number of times your ad was shown on any network.
Based on which network you are targeting, you probably need to analyze these two factors. This can prove to be the best way to get an idea of the success of your campaign.
The higher the reach, the better it is for your business. So, if you think that you are not able to get the expected reach from one creative or ad-content you can easily switch and try something else.
Number of Clicks
Once the viewer has seen your creative, you want him or her to take action. This action is always in the form of a click based on what you are showing them.
Whether it is taking them to your website or any resource (more often than not it is the website) the number of clicks on the advertisement can be a great judge of whether you are able to achieve the desired results or not.
Therefore, the second important factor to trace when running an advertising campaign has to be the number of clicks you receive on the ad.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
This is the measure of the total number of clicks on the ad divided by the total number of impressions.
In simpler words, this paints a clear picture of the total number of people who actually took action after watching the ad.
This can be the direct measure of success of your ad campaign, as you can easily get to know whether you were able to get the users to perform the desired action or not.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
This metric is important, as it helps you figure out if you are overspending on marketing and advertising.
To get an estimated CPC, you can use a simple formula – the total cost of all the advertising efforts that you are putting in divided by the number of clicks over a certain fixed time period.
Based on what you get at the end of this calculation will give you a clear idea on how much you are spending, and the results that you are getting out of the spent money. This can be crucial in setting up the budget and taking care of the financial aspect of your business.
Don’t ignore this metric, since costs can easily get out of hand.
Lead Conversion Rate (LCR)
There are two types of visitors that will come to your website after clicking an advertisement.
The first would be just to browse through the offer. The second would be the ones who are actually interested in buying something and are actively looking for it.
In short, you cannot expect every click to convert into a lead.
This is where tracking the LCR becomes quite important. By knowing how many people have actually been converted into leads from your advertising, you can eventually determine the efficiency of your campaign.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
While CPC gives you a good idea about the success of your ad campaign, CPL is the one factor that helps you determine the actual return on investment (ROI).
Plus, it can be the best way to determine the effectiveness of different ad platforms. For instance, CPL for different platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc., will be different.
You can compare them to determine which is bringing the best ROI and hence make the decision about where to increase specific efforts to get the best results.
Lead to Close Ratio (LCR)
It all boils to this single factor in the end. You might be getting hundreds of leads from your advertising campaign, but until they are getting converted into paying customers it is of no use.
This is the reason LCR becomes the most vital metric to measure when you advertise your business.
Lead to Close Ratio gives you a clear indication on whether the campaign is performing the way you intended it to perform or not.
After all, the ultimate goal for every business is to make more money by investing some of the money they’ve already made. That is why this metric is so important to pay attention to.
Conclusion
This last point sums up our long list of metrics that you need to keep a close eye on when determining the success of marketing and advertising campaigns.
Remember, you can run the most innovative and creative advertising campaign ever… But so long as you don’t have the numbers to judge the performance of that campaign it is of no use for your business. If you don’t know why you are failing, it will be far more difficult to succeed.
After all, there is no point in putting efforts into something without a plan, and without knowing the direction in which those efforts are headed.
So if you are planning to run an advertising campaign, the best thing to do is make sure you keep a close eye on these metrics and keep evolving your campaign based on what you see in these numbers.
Success will come once you utilize the data determined using these metrics and optimize your ad campaigns accordingly.