Tip #18 ∞ Measureability ∞

Advertising, like artwork, is very subjective. Some people react to one thing, other people react to other things. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So, how do you know if your advertising is "Working."

Well, that depends on what you mean by "working" which is why you should define your goals and build in measurability into your ad campaigns BEFORE they run if you want to know if your goals have been met.

What constitutes measurability? If your goal is something esoteric such as "building brand awareness" then you need to take a survey BEFORE you run the campaign of your target audience to ask them what they know/think/feel about your brand. Then you run another survey AFTER the campaign to explore the difference.

This takes a considerable amount of energy and expertise to do it right. But that's how you measure whether or not your campaign has succeeded in building brand awareness.

Let's say you want to "Unload extra product" and you want to run an ad to accomplish this. How do you measure the success of the ad? Look in your warehouse: If the product is still sitting there, was your ad unsuccessful? Have you also consider the OTHER 3Ps of marketing: Product (no one wants it), Price (It's too expensive), Distribution (You're asking people to bring in a Mack Truck to pick it up). Negatives in each of these areas can lead to a company assuming the "ad" didn't work, when in fact the problem was that your audience didn't have access to a Mack Truck and THAT's why they didn't buy your overstocked product.

Building in measureability takes creativity and energy. It takes additional budgetary considerations. It takes planning. College MAJORS are awarded based on advertising research and such. It takes YEARS to master the concept of measurability which is why your advertising provider is asking you to fork over the big bucks to pay for it.