Can Advertising be Measured?
Are You Measuring Your Marketing Activity Effectively?
Measuring advertising can be difficult. However, with the application of a few simple principles, you'll soon know exactly what can and can't be measured.
One of the most common questions asked by small businesses and their owners is; 'how do I measure advertising results?'. But before answering that question you need to ask a different one first; 'is my advertising measurable?'. The answer to that question is yes – and no.
It depends on the type of advertising you do and what the point of it is. As outlined in Marketing your Hobby, there are three different kinds of marketing or advertising activity; Infrastructure, Reactive and Proactive. For this article a fourth needs to be considered; Awareness. Briefly, these are;
- Infrastructure is what you need to be in business, e.g. your business cards, leaflet, website etc.
- Reactive items help people looking for your product or service find your business. Directories are a good example.
- Proactive is actively hunting for prospects, perhaps via outbound calling or direct mailing.
- Awareness activity is designed to get your business name around, so it could include sponsorship or certain types of newspaper adverts.
The purpose of the activity is the key thing to consider. If the purpose is to generate a response, e.g. get a prospect or customer to do something, then it’s measurable. If it’s to create awareness, measurement is possible but more difficult.
Proactive Advertising
Proactive advertising should always be measurable. It’s not always easy, but businesses should strive to find a way. Think of proactive advertising like a tap - you can switch it on and off whenever you need to generate more business.
If business is slow you can increase the amount of activity. If you’re operating at, or near, peak capacity levels or you want a holiday, you’ll need to slow down the number of new leads received until you’re in a better position to deal with them. Follow the instructions in Measuring Advertising Results for details of some measurement techniques.
Reactive Advertising
Reactive advertising can also usually be measured. You should be able to track how people obtained your phone number or email address by asking them. Your website monitoring system will tell you where visitors found your url. If the company who host your website don’t provide this information then change provider or incorporate a suitable website measurement system like Google Analytics into your site.
Then, when you’re setting your budget for the next year or quarter, you’ll know which reactive sources deserve your business.
Infrastructure and Awareness Advertising
This is difficult to measure because they may not in themselves generate a response, so you can’t track what people do as a result of seeing them.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t do these types of activities. On the contrary, it can greatly increase the responses you get from both proactive and reactive activities.
Awareness advertising increases the chances of your company making it on to a prospect’s ‘consideration list’. So when they’re next looking to purchase they’ll consider you because they’ve heard of you. See Using Customer Buying Processes for more details on how you can take advantage of this.
As it’s more difficult to measure the impact of infrastructure and awareness advertising, see Measuring Awareness Advertising for tips on how to do it effectively. It’s not impossible, but you do need to know what to measure.
