How to Evaluate Your Ad Campaign

Evaluation is one of the sign that a work is done within a good business governance. Evaluating the campaign is something that is highly encouraged, if not must, to do before or after the ad is run.

When it comes to evaluation in copywriting, the most important parameter of the success of a campaign is the ROI, to determine the revenue from a particular ad through a certain platform. As the ad could be launched virtually in the websites and social media, the tracking could be done through some app or websites as well.

With that being said, ROI should be a mutual target for a copywriter too. In the end of the day, the copywriter would always want to know does s/he do an excellent job or have to think about a change in the game.

But how to exactly do the evaluation?

Susan M Guneliur in her book(1) proposed a tracking mechanism. This tracking suggested to include a method to track the results of your ad through a special code, website address, or phone number to determine if the ad meets your return on investment objectives. Despite it is more like the job of a web developer, as a copywriter you should also take a look for the process for better communication with the team.

You can still do the evaluation (in fact: you are strongly encouraged to) when the ad campaign is done offline like in the magazine or some flyers. We will talk about some ways on to do that below.

So the campaign is evaluated: before it is launched, after it is launched, and periodically like after 3 or 6 months. It is normally included in the periodic business meeting. Here are some ways to evaluate your ad campaign:

1. Pretesting before launching

Margo Berman in her book(2) mentioned about pretesting the campaign. The test, or a Copy testing, allows a copy to be tested before it's released in an ad campaign. Subjects are asked to comment on myriad ad messages.

Here are some of the examples of the questions:

1. Have you ever seen a comparable ad to this one?

2. Would you consider buying the product in overall? Does the product look appealing?

3. How is your general impression on this ad?

4. Is there anything you like or dislike about the ad? Is there anything cohesive or confusing? Is the ad pretty consistent for you?

5. Do you have an emotional response on this ad?

6. How you might use the product?

7. Will you talk to others about the ad?

The format of answers of the questions above could be a short sentence/paragraph, but mostly it is better to give them some multiple choices answer. It's going to be easier for them to participate that way. As the surveyor, you will also benefit more from this kind or answer as it will be easier to translate into your parameters.

For sure, there are still more examples of questions to ask to your subjects. If you want more of them, you can ASK to get the free file HERE

The result of the survey could go to the next business meeting with the company members or becomes the decision will the ad resume to run or has to be paused or terminated.

2. Using a software, app, or chrome extension

An email software usually has this feature to track your campaign and hence, your ROI. other than that, there are several options for tracking. Whichever tool you choose, doing tracking is highly encuraged if you decide to put on your ad in the internet yourself, whether it's in Google Ad in a website or in YouTube, or through any other social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

This will come in handy if you run your ad through multiple website. You can put a special tag on the link that let you see which prospect comes from which website, and so on. Therefore, you get to see which path of an ad is more profitable than the others. Obviously, one product might be more profitable in a particular platform, while the other product ad could work better in the other platform too.

Here are some examples of Chrome Extensions you can use:

a. Google Tag Assistant Extensions

b. Redirect Path

c. Ghostery

d. Facebook Pixel Helper, if the ad run through Facebook

For the other browsers, you can try Firefox Frontier or Privacy Badger. In the long term, you might also want to evaluate which software, app, or extensions works best for you.

3. A third party evaluator, like a business consultant or related foundation

Getting an evaluation from a competent third party is however, usually done by your client, not you. but if you have the opportunity to learn from them, the knowledge and experience will be precious for your further steps. I'm gonna talk about this in the business perspective because that's mostly becomes the case.

Having a business consultant or a business coach around you is could be the most rational thing to do if your business has reached the scale that needs to be watched by a group of people. One of the actual benefit from them is that you can ask their professional opinion on your planned ad campaign. Obviously, evaluating an ad is not the only thing they can do, as they will make a thorough assessment in your business management and will walk you through the steps to hit your targets.

The consultant or coach could be the person who gained his/her skill academically or by being a practitioner themselves for years experience. It takes a special investment to hire them but in the end a good coach or consultant will save you from unnecessary trial and error, optimize your budgeting, and in the end: boost your profit.

4. Include the evaluation in the company's periodic business meeting

The good news about this is that a good company will automatically include the ad evaluation in the meeting, but the bad news is, as the outside partner, they may not include you in the real meeting that may prevent you from obtaining the exact picture of their campaign evaluation. Regardless, you can simply ask the resume or the note of their meeting related to the campaign you designed for your own review.

5. Semi-closed online surveys

As written above, this survey can be done before the campaign is officially launched, when the ad is still on the run, or after the ad is no longer being campaigned. Online surveys usually pays the respondents to fill in with some dime into their Paypal account. After you uploaded the questions, the survey website will run it for you with the appropriate respondents you need.

Here are some examples of survey website you may use:

a. surveymonkey.com

b. qualtrics.com

c. surveyplanet.com

d. enalyzer.com

In conclusion, there are several ways to evaluate your ad campaign. This evaluation is important to measure the success rate of your campaign, hence better future strategy.

As a copywriter, you should work with your client and perhaps other advisors to provide the best insight of the fate of your ad campaign.

References:

1. Susan M Guneliur, 2012. Kickass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps: Build the Buzz and Sell the Sizzle. Entrepreneur Press

2. Berman, M., 2012. The Copywriter's Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Strategic Advertising Copy. John Wiley & Sons