Advertising is something even the biggest companies still pay huge sums of money to get done because they know there will always be a return on investment afterwards.
So why are you hesitant on ads? It is one of the ways to get your products or brand in the faces of your target audience.
It is really a shame when you hear people say their businesses don’t need ads. The top notch organizations still advertise either traditional or online ad because they still want their presence felt and want to make more sales.
For example, company’s like Audi, Coca-cola, Procter and Gamble still advertise their products whether new or old products because they still want more leads and sales from both existing and new customers to boost return on investment.
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Therefore, it is disturbing when some SME’s decline from having to spend when it comes to advertisement. Adverts have gone beyond showing you audience or customers your product but it is also about telling your product brand story and product capabilities.
You can’t compromise when it comes to ads; all details are not to be left hanging in the air. Creating ads for a product or service campaign is incomplete without a channel of distribution which could be either traditional (fliers, banners etc) or online ad using (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc) whichever your preference may be, you have to be sure your making the right ad choice for your target audience.
Neil Patel,said he spent $66,372.09 on paid advertising through LinkedIn, Google AdWords, Retargeter, Perfect Audience, and StumbleUpon ads when he first started NeilPatel.com. you might say that is so much money but i guess you know he achieved set goals.
In Nigeria, statistics show that internet penetration in Nigeria is now 28.9% at estimated 43,982,200m users and as a result, owing to the huge marketing potentials inherent in digital media as a part of the overall marketing mix, coupled with the increasing use of the internet by Nigerians, brands are seeking to adopt online ads to maximize media spend return on investment.
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Business owners are beginning to understand the underlying effect of online marketing or ads for their business due to the increasing number of people online each day.
According to Statista, digital advertising revenue will rise to $191.85 billion in 2017, with about $170.65 billion accruing from ads in 2016.
Also, the digital behavioral pattern of the consumers is evolving rapidly due to convenient and accessible the internet has become; that even with your mobile phone and tablets, you can easily access what you deem necessary to access.
The factors contributing to this change in trend is as a result of the growing middle class with disposable income, TV viewing habits are changing due to lack of time and the Facebook and Twitter generation is also on the increase due to the convenience in its accessibility using mobiles.
According to a source (MMS 2009), total Ad Spend in Nigeria for 2009 stands at over $400 million. Knowing how much is accruing from just ads, it is reasonable to understand how you too can break into the market and get things right.
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The whole aim of ads is to ensure you are getting back your money’s worth after and ad has been published. When it comes to online marketing, unlike traditional marketing you can review your return on investment (ROI) and make plans on how to improve your campaign strategies.
Traditional marketing or advertisement just provides you with the campaign and all the images and designs but it doesn’t provide a medium in which you can analyze and view your campaign progress to know if you are really getting your money’s worth.
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The most instinctive way to measure digital advertising return on investment is to track metrics that tie directly to revenue and profit (think conversions, opportunities).
In considering tracking your metrics, you should put the following will enable you measure your progress when it comes to your ads.
Brand awareness to heighten return on investment
To measure adequately, you should have a vivid picture of your brand visibility considering the percentage of people who knew about your brand.
For the purpose of best practice, you should be able to evaluate how much progress has been achieved after an online campaign has been published online.
This reminds me of the media your using for your campaign. You have to strategically consider what online media your target audiences use the most; this will ensure you don’t waste your time on doing the wrong thing and expecting positive results thereafter.
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You can simply measure your brand awareness by looking at your direct traffic numbers, the number of people who searched for your video by its name or hashtag, the number of clicks that came from referrals, and the number of social media shares and mentions.
You can also find current search data on your brand name by using a tool like Google Trends. Also, you can use Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads, Stumbleupon Paid Discovery, Reddit Ads, Twitter Promoted Tweet, Yahoo!, and Bing Network to track return on investment for your online advertising.
You need to know how many people recognize your brand after the campaign. To determine this, look at your website analytics to find the number of traffic that come in from your advertising directly, and then use Google
Trends to see if the number of people searching for your brand name is increasing.
Purchase influence
Did your ad lead to an increase in sales? Look at the first-touch and multi-touch attribution that was generated by your ad for a look at the return of investment but for a larger picture, look at the amount of traffic generated by your campaign and compare it to your sales numbers—including the numbers before and after the campaign launched.
This will give you a greater understanding of how your campaign is influencing the purchase decision of your customers.
Traffic number
This is basically to let you know how much traffic the ad is generating to your website. This is something you can’t achieve with traditional marketing or advertising.
As your brand becomes more recognized, you should see an increase in traffic, from people who come directly to your site by typing in your URL as well as following your ad.
Digital marketing ads are more analytical with figures to show you how your fairing over the period you put up the campaign.
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Measuring ads makes it possible to know which website, social media platform or blog is working for the campaign and removing those ones which are performing poorly in the campaigns.
The success of any ad is primarily dependent on the amount of customers and leads your ad is able to acquire and retain which eventually will enhance the return on investment (ROI) for your business from the ad. Everybody wants to invest and get reasonable returns from their investment.
It will be sad if you honestly waste money on ads and end up getting nothing in return, it’s like a futile journey. Hence, online marketing gives you the opportunity to weigh your variables and adjust where there is a need for adjustment in strategy and channels used for ads to ensure greater return on investment.
Once you can hire the internet marketing services of a digital marketing agency due to technicalities, it will be less of an issue for you to worry about how the outcome may be especially when they are professional about their job.
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Hence, once you have ascertained by comparing the monies spent on campaigns to what you have received as a turn over on investment, if it makes up a chunk of the monies spent and even more, then it is a profitable business but once your objectives are not met, then you should consider going back to the drawing board.
Before anything, you should be certain on the reason for your ad, is it to attract more customers, to create awareness, follower-ship; whatever it maybe, you should be sure of the aim before carrying out a campaign of any kind.
Having spoken about return on investment, I will love to share with you some of the best places I publish my campaigns and ads.
Here are some of the places you also can publish your ads
With the number of subscribes on a daily basis, it won’t be a bad idea to try out Facebook for your ads. In one of my post on Facebook advertisement, I discussed extensively on how you can achieve maximum profit by using Facebook as your ad platform, you can check the post.
The number of Facebook users is exponentially increasing which is the main reason why you need to include Facebook as part of your ad platform for your brand recognition, customer attraction, sales, and repeat sales.
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This is one of the most used and popular search engines. Everything people look to search for, they first use Google before heading to the home page.
Google is one of the best advertising channels because a lot of people use it for their first search especially in Nigeria.
You can use Google Adwords for your advertisement, just like Facebook, you will spend some money for the adverts. These amount range is proportional to the type of campaign or the price range you deem fit for your business.
Alongside Facebook and Google, Twitter is also another powerful advertisement tool because of the number of subscribers. On twitter, your advert will show as promoted tweets to your target audience. The good thing about
Twitter is once your promoted tweets is shown to your target audience, they can retweet it and others to can also retweet which will result in brand recognition and also influence purchase decisions.
Blogs and websites
OK, this is where I take you to Linda Ikeji’s blog. Am sure you see all the adverts on her blog, that is what marketing on blogs and websites look like.
This is also another paid platform for advertisement where every your target audience and the audience of your host channel with view your ad and can make purchase decisions on your product or service.
Image Courtesy: Linda ikeji blog
It is important to not only select a well recognized blog or website but that which will be effective.
You might spend a lot depending on the price variation set by the blog or site owner but I promise that you will end up making triple whatever you must have spent in running the campaign.
For all ads and campaigns, there is a segmented time frames stipulated to run your ads but depending on the package you are convenient with, you run your ad and once it elapses, you are expected to renew your plan; that is if you are still interested in running your campaign but if not, then your ad ends within that time you contracted for.
Conclusion
Campaigns are ran with one reason which is the sole aim of the campaign either for brand awareness, influence purchase, product awareness and recognition; whichever your objective maybe, you have to be sure that you are getting your money’s worth.
When I say getting your monies worth I mean achieving the set objective because once it is not achieved, it means your aim has been defeated. In other to know how well your ads are accomplishing their aim, you should be able to:
1. Track your conversion rate on any of the platforms or advert channel you are using to run your ad.
2. Know how well your conversion goals are being met by your leads, prospects and customers.
3. Also, you should be able to assign specific monetary value to each conversion in other to understand if you are really achieving your set objective. This is because once you break it down; you will be able to analyze how much value you are gaining from the ad. For example, you put up an ad about your product probably a phone; you paid three thousand naira on Twitter for the ad. Now, you should break that three thousand down into the number of leads or customers you have acquired then you will be able to know if you are gaining return on investment through or ad or losing.
4. You should ensure you measure your total benefits by the channel or channels you have used for you campaign. This gives you an idea of what channel works best for your business.
5. Lastly, you should analyze the outcome of your ad whether positive or negative and endeavor to work towards improving your strategies for better outcomes.
Every business owner wants a return on investment meaning, for every penny spent, you want to see positive results that will yield a sort of financial growth but once it hits the wall and comes empty, then there is a problem which needs to be rectified.
With online ads, you can be rest assured to achieve your goals due to the rise in number of online users over the years.
One promise is you can never be wrong when it comes to online marketing but all you need to do is advertise on the right channel or channels and track your progression, and surpass your goal.
In the words of Larry Kim, “Never let your prospects walk away or forget about you.”
The post Are you getting return on investment (ROI) on your online ad spend? appeared first on NATIVEDGE.