How To Learn From Your Ad Campaigns In Preparation For The Next One

The marketing expert Daymond John has been credited by Goodreads as remarking: “Life is a cruel teacher. She loves to give you the test first and the lesson later.” This is especially true in the business world and underlines how crucial it is for you to analyze the success of your previous marketing ad campaigns.

If you have ‘ad enough’ – ahem – of your advertising efforts bearing surprisingly little fruit, you should make sure, when one ad campaign closes, you carefully assess it for clues about where it went wrong.

How thoroughly should you measure your last campaign’s success?

Inevitably, different brands have handled ad campaign analysis in different ways, with some companies looking over the statistics only briefly and others diving into them like Scrooge McDuck into a huge pile of money. So, which of these two approaches should you take?

In an article for Smart Insights, independent consultant Gavin Llewellyn opines that, with digital marketing ad campaigns, “it’s always best to err on the side of detail so that you can get a true picture of how different elements of a campaign performed in the context of the overall campaign objective.” So, what should you do if you aren’t closely tracking your ad campaigns in the first place?

How should ad campaign analysis be conducted?

Let’s assume that you run a startup and are too inexperienced in the corporate sphere to know exactly where to start with analyzing the ad campaigns. In this situation, you could consider out-of-home (OOH) advertising provider Clear Channel’s Clear Start program, which would let you tap into an ad network reaching 93% of the UK.

Joining this scheme could also ease your efforts to carry out market research and either street or online audience surveys. Of course, these three particular research strategies would also be options for you if you are responsible for a long-established business. Also Read – How to Great Research a Business Opportunity

What exactly can campaign analysis teach you?

It can inform you of much more than simply which elements of the campaign worked and which ones didn’t. You can also get a telling insight into your target audience’s response to the campaign and review how well your advertising efforts fared in pursuing specific objectives rather than just the main one.

Still, what exactly should these ‘specific objectives’ be? The answer will very much depend on your business and the market in which it is competing. The Balance Small Business recommends that you target “a specific amount of sales for a specific product or service within a specific amount of time.”

This is so that “the parameters of your campaign are laser-focused and you can measure the effectiveness of the campaign as it proceeds”, the site continues.

Do you have the right tools at your disposal?

Some of them could be within easier reach than you have previously realized. For example, if you are eager to increase awareness of your brand or enhance your website’s prominence in Google search results, you could utilize Google Analytics. However, don’t forget to set a baseline for whatever metric you do choose.