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How to Measure and Maintain Your Digital Campaign’s Performance

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As businesses across the country begin to reopen, a great way to reach potential new customers is to run paid digital marketing campaigns, like Google Ads or Facebook Ads. However, it isn’t enough just to set up the campaigns and leave them running. To better understand how your campaigns are performing, you’ll need to monitor their progress and metrics regularly. Each digital marketing platform gives you the opportunity to review your campaigns, and typically will allow you to make changes while your campaign is running based on what has been working, or what hasn’t. The first step to optimizing your ad campaigns is to know what information to pay attention to.

  1. Know which metrics measure or quantify your specific marketing goals best.

Before starting any digital campaign, you should have a clear goal in mind of what you’d like to achieve through your advertising. If you’d like to drive traffic to your website or encourage online sales, focus on link clicks and click-through rate (CTR). If your marketing goal is to drive phone calls to your business, check out the call details report in Google Ads. There’s no specific value or number for a “good” number of clicks or phone calls — measuring the success of your campaign largely depends on your specific business structure and goals. CTRs often vary based on industry, but you can always estimate or create goals based off of certain CTR benchmarks

  1. Compare your campaign’s metrics to another timeframe.

If you were running the same or a similar campaign at a different time, compare the same metrics to that timeframe. Are there significant differences, or do they look about the same? Have they improved? If seasonality matters to your business, consider running different campaigns at peak times than you would during the off-season. On that same note, expect your metrics to be significantly higher during your peak season than the off-season. If your campaign at the same time last year was performing better, consider factors that are both in your control and out of your control. As an example, in 2020, many service-based businesses have seen a decrease in traffic due to COVID-19 — therefore, their revenue and conversions as a result of their ad campaigns will likely be higher in 2019 than 2020 — this would be a circumstance that is mostly out of their realm of control. However, having this information gives you the ability to rationalize campaign performance across different circumstances, and when you feel that you can make a change for the better, adjust your ads accordingly.

  1. Adjust your campaigns based on their performance.

If you’ve noticed long-running and consistent patterns of low performance on your ads, adjust what you can to see if those changes help your ad performance. Ensure that your ad text has an attention-grabbing call-to-action (CTA). Simply including language like “Call us today!” or “Stop by now!” might encourage a potential customer to click your ad or stop by your store. Make sure that your landing page is easy to navigate and has the information that your customers are looking for. Some ad algorithms consider landing page quality as a measure of an ad’s overall quality, and a hard to navigate or poorly-optimized landing page may reduce your ad’s quality score — therefore lowering its performance and impressions. While it may be tempting to make several changes at once, it can be helpful to update only one component of the campaign at a time in order to better track which has an effect on ad performance. You can also adjust your ad spend if you think there may be benefits to a different budget. The possibilities are endless! Lastly, consider reading more about Google’s ad requirements and Facebook’s ad requirements to ensure that your ads meet their standards and are therefore being delivered to the best possible audience. 

It can be difficult to effectively manage and measure your digital ad campaigns–especially if you’re simultaneously managing a storefront, employees, and other marketing tasks. If you find yourself in need of help, contact Pulse Marketing Agency today! We’ll run your campaigns based on each platform’s best practices, and even include a complimentary and easy-to-understand report detailing your campaign’s performance — along with any recommendations we have for optimizing your campaigns. Pulse is a Google Ads Partner and our employees maintain certifications in Google Ads, as well as stay up-to-date on the best practices of different ad platforms.

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