Marketing is an extremely important element of your business’ success. At the same time, marketing is changing all of the time, and digital marketing is difficult to understand if you’re new to it.
Your marketing efforts might not be appraised in dollars and cents anymore. At least, not at first. That makes it hard to assess the ROI of your marketing efforts these days.
We’re here to give you a brief refresher on how to assess your marketing efforts in the modern age. Hopefully, you’ll be a little more confident after reading this article.
How to Gauge the ROI of Your Marketing Efforts
Once upon a time, you could send out an ad, wait a couple of months, reference your sales numbers, and know if the ad was successful. If your sales increased during the time the ad was in print, you could be sure that it was doing its job.
Now, however, you have a number of different metrics that determine whether your ad is successful or not. Sure, sales (or your preferred metric) are still the end-goal, but there’s a lot more involved.
Let’s cover the metrics of success that are increasingly important. The following items are what to look for when you’re considering the success of your ad campaigns.
1. Engagements
When you’re examining your ad numbers, the platform you’re using will have a section entitled, “engagements.” On Facebook, for example, this number lies right next to “people reached.”
Engagements are typically one of the key metrics of success. When someone comments or clicks on your ad, that counts as an engagement. While engagements are a vanity metric, meaning they don’t really do much for your bottom line, they still speak to the quality of your ad.
Huge numbers of engagements mean that your name is getting out there and users are interested in your content.
2. Following
The natural by-product of a great ad campaign is an increase in your social media following and web traffic.
Make sure to check your web traffic stats through Google Analytics and monitor the number of followers you have while the ad is running. You should notice a correlation. An ad is worth very little if it doesn’t gear users toward your page, interest them enough to follow you, and potentially make a conversion.
3. Conversions
A conversion is essentially your metric of success. It could be a sale, a subscription, a download, a follow, or something else.
Ultimately, though, a conversion occurs when users follow your marketing funnel toward doing the thing you want them to do. If you notice that one ad is leading to conversions while the others aren’t, identify the differences and optimize for them in the next campaign.
Want to Get More Involved?
Your marketing efforts are crucial to the success of your business. There’s no getting around it.
Luckily, there are people available who can help you generate the perfect campaign. Explore our site to learn more about how to move forward with a successful campaign.