All business owners at some point, wonder if their advertising is working. While every company is different, there are indicators you can use to evaluate most campaigns. Determining the degree of success of your campaign involves more than just asking customers how they learned about your company, brand, or services.

Instead we suggest looking at specific metrics, such as the number of email sends that result in a sale, or an increase in comments on your recent social media posts. This can give you a better idea of where people are being exposed to your brand and how they’re interacting with that information. Here are six areas that can help you determine if your advertising is working. 

Are Your KPIs Being Met?

Setting clear goals before the start of an ad campaign can help you define key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPI’s can help you determine whether you're accomplishing your goals. By studying increases in sales, social media growth, and other KPIs, you can identify areas where your goals are being met or could use some help.

Avoid vanity metrics and choose ones that truly measure the goals set at the beginning of your campaign. Understanding your click-through rates, site visits, and website views can provide valuable insights into the success of your marketing tactics, such as email advertising, display advertising, and SEM. Also, the number of conversions via phone calls, increased lead form fills, and other predetermined metrics can be early indicators of success towards your marketing goals.

Increased Brand Awareness

If your marketing is focused on increasing brand awareness, reviewing ways to increase your reach is the way to go. Compare recent increases in social media followers, video views and completion rates, and overall level of engagement to historical data to determine if your marketing campaign is performing well against this marketing goal.

An increase in followers can correlate with the overall awareness of your brand, but it is important to remember that numbers do not necessarily indicate success on their own. By studying more in-depth engagement statistics, like an increase in comments and shares on social posts, can provide a better picture of performance.

By knowing the reach of your radio campaign, it will show you what percentage of your target demographic you’re reaching. Identifying radio stations that best reach your target demographic are the foundation for a successful radio campaign. You’ll want sufficient reach and frequency of your message on those stations to insure your success, along with a strong call-to-action. If it’s the right message, on the right radio stations, with sufficient frequency, your campaign should perform well for you. 

Overall Website Traffic

Successful advertising often results in a boost to your website traffic. Higher numbers of site visitors, particularly those who are new to the site, combined with low bounce rates likely indicate your marketing is reaching the right audience who is interested in your products and services. Looking at more in-depth statistics, such as increased page views and increases in average time spent on the site, can also be indicative that your marketing is driving the right people to your website.

It’s important to understand the conversion of website visits. Each business will have their own targets for conversion, for example landing on the location page, a phone call, or a form fill. If a business sees site visits increase, there should be an increase to conversions leading to an increase in potential sales.

Social Media Growth

Both overall social media reach and the types of engagement followers are participating in should increase as a result of successful advertising. While acquiring more followers is the first step in deciding whether or not your social media pages are reaching the right audience, likes, comments, shares, and clicks can be just as important as your follower count. 

Increase in Sales

An increase in sales is the primary goal of most marketing campaigns. Businesses can compare year over year and same store sales. During the campaign, did you see a lift in sales you can attribute to your campaign, and not to seasonal lift? 

Another way you can measure the results of your advertising is by providing customers with promotional codes that can be easily tracked online and in store. Your sales can then be attributed directly to the results of your campaign. 

Companies should also pay attention to the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer. Increases in the average spend per sale from returning customers can be an indicator of your marketing success. 

Finding the types of advertising that work best for your brand likely produce the best results. Working with a local media partner that’s familiar with the interests and needs of your target audience can be a great way to advertise and analyze the success of your marketing efforts.