One of the most common questions all companies have when it comes to marketing efforts is, “how do I know if what I’m doing is working?”
Thankfully, this question can be answered with a single word: Reporting.
Marketing has so many different metrics that can be measured depending on the type of mediums being used – reach, impressions, frequency, tv points, CPM, CPC, but knowing what to do with that information, and how to use it to your advantage, is where Raborn Media comes in to play and is a trusted partner.
We believe reporting is and should focus on these three elements:
Holistic
We believe the results contained in the reports we utilize speak volumes and play a key part in our overall approach to your company’s marketing strategy. Reporting is more than just seeing how many clicks your ad got, or what was the total spend of that specific campaign. While these are important items to measure, it’s applying those with the overall goal we’re trying to accomplish. So much of the goal trying to be accomplished may be dependent on your company, your industry, etc. Let’s take a company trying to do general brand awareness. This may seem kind of vague right? Increasing general brand awareness and how will this be measured? If we set up a targeted audience and initiate a campaign to drive this audience to the About Us page of the website, we can take so much from the results. How many users saw the ad = reach. How many times your ad was shown on screen = impressions. How many times, on average, did each user see that ad = frequency. Once the ad was clicked on, how long did that user stay on that call to action page = time on site. In this instance, if a company ran an ad that reached 5,000 users with 35,000 impressions, translating to an average frequency of 7, which then resulted in the user spending 1 minute and 15 seconds on your About Us page, we would conclude that our goal of brand recognition was achieved because retention is built around someone seeing an ad for the same company multiple times and as a result heading to the website where a significant amount of time was spent reading and learning about the company. Using holistic reporting and analyzing it to determine if the goal was achieved is a key skill of Raborn Media.
Apples to Apples Comparisons
Another key element in reporting when discussing the success of an ad, campaign, or goal is making sure we’re looking at the right metrics and comparing metrics correctly. We provide guidance by keeping data in perspective and allowing enough time to see a trend of results. We want to make sure we’re reviewing the correct metrics based on the goal objective – search campaigns, display campaigns, video campaigns, shopping campaigns, etc. Each of these campaign goal types has different objectives in mind. Additionally, we want to make sure we’ve allowed enough time to determine a trend. Not only would we never compare an impression to a tv point, but we would also never gauge the success of a campaign after its initial launch to one that had performed for a few months.
Informed Decision Making
Ultimately, the goal of reporting at Raborn Media is to arm you with data and assist with informed decision-making. Marketing analytics can be a lot, and messy.
One of the primary focuses we have with our Reporting is presenting it in a fashion that is clean and simple to understand through a mixture of copy and graphics.
If the information is clear, it helps with the overall decision-making process. The reporting we provide also helps with the next steps. An example of this may be a company looking to expand into new markets. Say we placed Facebook and YouTube pre-roll ads in 3 different states and monitored the results. After the campaign is over, we can show a map of where the most clicks occurred or what state visited your website the most, which then helps us make an informed decision to pursue that specific state next. Lastly, reporting isn’t always used when we need to make a decision, but it’s used to highlight adjustments we’ve made along the way. The team at Raborn Media is committed to constant monitoring along the way, not just at your annual review. We make informed decisions in real-time based on how a campaign is going, and use our reporting to relay the results.
