Reviewing your digital advertising metrics will help you understand how your ads are performing and is crucial for the growth and sustainability of your business. One way to do this is by focusing on the three Cs.
Community
Building a community of loyal customers can bring not only more revenue through repeat purchases or bookings, but can also effectively produce the perfect target audience for your digital advertising efforts.
Through monitoring your community engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments, you can gauge the effectiveness of your marketing activity and community building to identify areas for improvement.
Measure this with reach and engagement
Reach is how many individual people viewed your ads and social posts. This can be your followers as well as new audience groups. A higher reach value exposes you to new audiences and gives your brand more opportunities to shine.
Engagement (likes, shares and comments) pushes your ads to the top of feeds. Take note of what type of content your audience is engaging with and make more of that.
Cross-platform
Cross-platform advertising is another key aspect to review in your digital advertising reports. We recommend using multiple platforms to market your brand to increase leads, subscriptions, or revenue. Review the results together and identify how to maximise these opportunities.
Measure this with click-through rates and sessions
The click-through rate (CTR) is calculated by the number of clicks on your ad divided by the number of impressions (times your ad is shown to anyone including the same person). A higher CTR means your ads are appealing to your audience.
CTR is a good measure for visual ads (Meta and Google Display for example) to indicate how engaging your ads are. Google Search advertising is a little bit different as your customer isn’t ‘served’ your ad, they must search for you, your product or service.
A session is the period of interaction with your website from a unique visitor on a particular device. If a person clicks on your ad and doesn’t interact with your page, it doesn’t register as a session.
High clicks and interaction metrics (such as landing page views) with low session rates could indicate issues with your website or a lack of continuity between ad design and website design.
Cost Efficiency
Cost efficiency is a crucial factor in measuring the success of your digital ad campaigns. Monitor metrics to identify which campaigns are the most cost-effective and adjust your advertising budget accordingly.
Measure this with cost per click and cost per action
A cost per click (CPC) is exactly that: how much it costs when someone clicks on your ad. Google ads are charged per click so ensure this value is low to prevent exhausting your budget too quickly.
While Facebook ads are charged per 1000 people viewing them, a high CPC could highlight an underperforming ad.
Cost per action (CPA) isn’t necessarily the cost of a transaction made on your website via a digital ad. If your business is in e-commerce, you may be tracking subscriptions to a newsletter, checkouts, or purchases. A CPA is your ad spend divided by all of the actions recorded in a given period.
Actions can also be called conversions and are a high value metric that is essential in determining the return on your investment in digital advertising.
Focus on these three Cs to holistically understand your audience and their behaviours, and to ensure your campaigns reach the right people and result in a positive return on investment. By monitoring these marketing metrics regularly, you can make data-driven decisions and optimise your advertising strategies for maximum impact.