Ad Campaigns: 4 Tips For Measuring Success

So, you launched your digital marketing campaign last week and are wondering when the leads are going to start rolling in like the internet told you they would.

Patience, young grasshopper.

A lot of businesses make the mistake of expecting BIG results far too soon after the launch of their digital marketing campaign, when really, you need to be in the long-game mindset.

We’ve picked the brains of our marketing director, Esther, to bring you four fabulous tips on how you can set realistic expectations for the success of your campaign.

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Ditch the conservative ad spend

A lot of fingers go into the air when the question of increasing ad spend is asked. In all fairness, it can be difficult to trust that a campaign will become more successful if you put more money into it, if you’re already not achieving the ROI you anticipated. But, a lot of super promising marketing campaigns get cut short because of this hesitancy! Setting up your campaigns correctly is super important; however, with less ad spend, your chances of reaching the right audience lower as well.

Try out our super handy tried-and-true calculation to help figure out just how much you should be spending to achieve the results you want:

First, jot down your annual customer value (or lifetime value if you have higher retention rates).

Next,  determine how much money you’d be willing to spend to get a client like that enquiring with your business - aka cost-per-lead. Let’s say your client value sits around the $3-6K mark - you might actually be willing to pay up to $300-600 per lead (that’s only 10%).

Multiply that figure by the number of leads you’d like to see each month, and voila! That total figure represents how much ad spend you should be allocating to your campaigns. For example, you might be happy to pay $400 per lead and you’d like to be receiving 10 leads a month - if so, your ad spend should be sitting at around $4,000/month. Conversely, if you’re only spending $1,000/month on ad spend, you shouldn’t be expecting more than 2-3 leads a month from your advertising channels.

Maybe that number made you recoil just a little bit because it’s a LOT higher than you expected. But the thing is, if you’re looking for great results, it’s an investment you have to make!

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Be patient: The 15/85 rule

The slightly disappointing truth is that while you’ll likely reach thousands of people in the first three months of your marketing campaign, only 15% (at most) will take any action within those three months. The more hopeful side to this is that the other 85% of people you reach in that first three months aren’t lost! Many of these people will enquire with your business or purchase your product after 6 months, a year, or even three years down the line (we’re still getting enquiries from businesses who started following us back in 2019!).

Timing is everything and often the timing isn’t right, but that doesn’t make these people less valuable, as you never know when they’ll be ready for your product/service that you have been priming them for all this time!

Just because you’re not seeing immediate results, doesn’t mean your campaign isn’t working. Digital marketing is all about sustainable growth - you gotta be in it for the long haul!

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The importance of an organic strategy

Ads do a fantastic job of going out into the market and finding your unique target audience BUT there’s only so much they can do to actually nurture your audience.

Whenever we work with a brand on their digital marketing, the results are always best if the team is also active on their channels with regular organic content. Whether that’s a monthly newsletter, a consistent TikTok channel, or daily Instagram stories, it’s always worth the effort and makes a huge contribution to building great customer relationships.

Not to mention, if a potential customer sees your social media ad and clicks through to your page and sees you haven’t posted in three months? This can be a HUGE red flag for that potential customer! Organic content will boost your validity, meaning that consumers can trust that you’re an active and reputable business. Remember that there is an invisible audience of people who are watching your content or visiting your page but not necessarily engaging, and nurturing this group is still just as important as your loyal/engaged following.

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Reframing expectations: Metrics vs. Objectives

When looking at your ad campaign’s analytics, it can be really easy to get caught up in the numbers - e.g., wanting a low CPC, CPM, or high engagement, clicks and conversion rates, all at the same time.

Remember this: Success will look different for every campaign.

This means it’s vital that you educate yourself on what's actually important relative to the objective of your campaign - which is chosen at the initial set up (engagement, video views, traffic, etc).

For example, a high cost per click on an engagement campaign is no cause for panic, given the objective is all about your audience staying on the platform and engaging with your content, rather than visiting your website. Getting low video-views on an ad that sits within a traffic campaign is also okay, because the objective is about getting people to click, not watch!

This seems like simple stuff, but it’s imperative that you match your expectations with what you’re optimising for.

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Final thoughts...

This stuff matters! When it comes to paid social advertising, there are many misconceptions that often lead to people cutting their campaigns short, swearing off social channels forever, and ultimately, shooting themselves in the metaphorical foot.

Success rates differ for every business, but what you can rely on is the fact that video marketing WORKS. People trust visibility - if you don’t show up, neither will your customers.

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