There has been plenty of discussion across the web about measuring online advertising campaigns. Many posts cite our industry’s current fix, the click through rate, as a good solution, but we’ve found that integrating brand metrics into our view of success makes for a more complete picture.
Historically, online campaigns have had the luxury of ubiquitous behavioral accompaniment. Along with CTR, we track other behavioral metrics (aka Key Performance Indicators) such as impressions, interaction rate, total clicks, cost per impression, cost per interaction, cost per click, leads or acquisitions, visits to key website pages, purchases, and cost per significant action; each built and widely used throughout the online marketing world to help us better understand how our media changes people’s behavior.
While these behavioral metrics are certainly important, we feel that these metrics alone don’t tell the whole story. They tend to be a narrow window into how successful our campaigns are. Instead, what we have started to recognize is that value comes from more than clicks, time, and transactions. The most valuable customer isn’t necessarily the one that clicks, interacts, or even buys the most.
We’ve found that our behavioral metrics tell us the most when accompanied by attitudinal ones, metrics that help us understand how our advertising changes our brand in the minds of the target over time. These metrics allow us to better plan and place messaging considering how it effects our brand in the long term.
We use three types of studies on a number of clients to give us a more complete look at how our advertising is truly affecting our target:
1. Online advertising effectiveness studies: These studies issue brand tracking study-like questions to gauge the brand and sales impact of our online advertising. Most providers (our preferences listed below) use a control/exposed methodology, having each group respond to a questionnaire that includes common brand metrics like awareness, preference, motivation, persuasion, etc.
Insight Express, Dynamic Logic, Factor TG
2. Buzz monitoring: Buzz monitoring studies aggregate all the conversation happening online about your brand or category – in traditional or social media – and use that data to gather insight and make messaging recommendations. See our post on capturing conversations for more info.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics, TNS Cymfony, ScoutLabs
3. Net Promoter score: The sworn tool of loyalty marketing geeks, the Net Promoter score, asks a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale, “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend of colleague?” From there, it categorizes responses into three groups: Promoters (9 to 10 rating), Passives (7 to 8 rating), and Detractors (0 to 6 rating), then subtracts the Detractors from the Promoters. “Good scores” vary industry to industry, but, typically, anywhere over 40% is strong.
Each of these fills a gap of knowledge that the behavioral metrics certainly do not. When used in conjunction with those behavioral metrics, particularly when balanced per the objective in an index, we’ve been able to spend smarter and persuade more effectively.
What other methods have you used to find the attitude behind the behavior?
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