Good measurement is actionable. While measurement can provide vital insights about the results of a marketing campaign, brands can unlock even greater value when they put those insights to work.
A common way marketing teams do this is by optimizing campaigns while they’re running—for example, by reallocating budget to ads that are performing better.
However, actionable measurement isn’t limited to just the mid- or post-campaign phases. Rather, measurement can provide immense value at the planning stage, assisting marketers in crafting campaigns that are more effective and more efficient. Here are three areas in which advertisers should consider measurement when setting up a campaign.
Audience insights
More than ever, an effective audience strategy is an urgent priority for marketers.
Industry shifts in addressability make it harder for advertisers to reach their audience and measure results. In fact, 85% of marketers express concern about the impact that a changing ad addressability landscape will have on their business, according to Advertiser Perceptions.
Good pre-campaign research can help brands garner relevant insights about their audience as well as how to effectively reach them. That includes defining personas that align with your campaign objectives, understanding audience preferences, and finding out if and how your audience is engaging with your brand.
One way to do this is through direct audience feedback. As an example, Amazon Ads helps brands survey audiences through a tool called Audience Research (beta), enabled by the Amazon Shopper Panel, an opt-in, invitation-only program.
Based on the responses, Audience Research helps surface and clarify audiences who are aligned with your campaign goals and highly engaged with your brand and category. It also provides insights into key segments that are in-market for the broader product category, beyond your brand. Additionally, the tool can provide insights around the motivations, attitudes, and shopping preferences of your audience segments—and allows you to compare responses across different demographics and lifestyles.
Through this kind of research and measurement, brands can set up campaigns that help deliver the right message to the right audience.
Creative optimization
Marketers have long known ad creative is one of the most important drivers of success in a marketing campaign. In fact, according to research from Nielsen, creative provides 47% of total sales impact. In addition to optimizing channel mix, spend and other variables, brands would be well-served to focus on creative effectiveness, since it has such a big impact on overall ad or campaign effectiveness.
Good pre-campaign research can help brands garner relevant insights about their audience as well as how to effectively reach them.
Rather than kicking off campaigns and trying to interpret if and how creative is affecting performance midflight or post-campaign, brands can deploy more effective and efficient campaigns from the get-go by testing creative beforehand.
For instance, Amazon Ads helps advertisers identify the right creative for brand campaigns through a tool called Creative Testing (beta), a survey tool that lets a brand select relevant audience segments and then present multiple creative options to them (display or video). The survey reporting can then help the brand understand which creative approach resonates best with the intended audience.
When testing creative, evaluating individual creative elements is essential—in addition to the creative option as a whole. Amazon Ads Creative Testing, for example, helps identify the most appealing image or copy for a specific campaign. Another advantage of testing your creative is that it can help inform general branding direction including messaging tone and visual style more broadly. By running more tests over time, across multiple campaigns, you can start to identify marketing themes that work for your brand.
Moreover, measuring the effectiveness of creative can also give you insights into your audience and how they perceive your brand.
Media mix
Unsurprisingly, consumers have many more media options today. In fact, according to Upland BlueVenn, consumers now interact with brands across 20-plus channels. So it’s no wonder that most marketers (65%) attribute the growing complexity of the advertising industry to the increase in number of media channels, according to eMarketer.
Given that complexity, measurement plays an important role in providing greater clarity before an advertiser ever commits a dollar to media. Good strategies implemented before a campaign can help advertisers understand the potential efficacy of channels in achieving marketing goals.
There are a variety of ways to do this, including via media planning. One of the approaches to media planning at Amazon Ads is a marketing mix modeling solution. Based on Amazon Ads signals, as well as third-party off-Amazon inputs, this measurement solution helps a brand connect its objectives to tactics by predicting the effect of future media tactics, as well as quantifying Amazon Ads and non-Amazon Ads media efficiency in achieving objectives and identifying opportunities to optimize media mix.
Use pre-campaign measurement to improve effectiveness and efficiency
Measurement plays a vital role over the life of a campaign. But while an advertiser can optimize campaigns midflight or interpret results after they end, they can also derive great value by using good measurement even before a campaign begins.
Making informed pre-campaign decisions can help you feel more confident when you launch your campaign—and can also lead to greater efficiency so you can maximize the impact of every dollar spent and turn your best ideas into exceptional marketing campaigns.
