Promotions 2.0Blurring the line between interactive advertising, promotions and social network marketing.

June 10th, 2009

Promotions Make Media More Measurable

We all keep hearing about the challenges of measuring marketing campaigns.  It’s true, tracking the overall ROI of a campaign is not entirely possible since there is a large qualitative and not quantitative aspect involved.  However, by adding a promotional element we can directly track consumer interactions & engagement.

Traditional media campaigns rely on eyeballs, meaning the amount of people who actually see the ad.  However, as media costs continue to rise, audiences have become more fragmented, making them harder to reach.  So how do you measure the success of these massive costs?  Well, you try to figure out how many people saw the ad,  it’s like measuring the success of a Google AdWords campaigns strictly by impressions, not very effective, since the majority of advertising messages are ignored by consumers. Traditional media relies entirely on one way communication, with as many people as possible, but then what?  As advertising clutter continues to expand consumers ignore a larger percentage of the ads they see.  All we have to do is click the skip button, change the channel, or turn our heads; which in most cases is exactly what we do.

By adding a promotional element to a campaign, consumers now have a reason to interact with the brand, a reason not to ignore the message, a reason to share the message with others. Better yet, all of these actions can be measured.

• Traffic to a promotion site, there are many ways to measure this i.e. referral sites, organic listings, etc.

• Amount of consumers who enter the promotion

• Brand engagement - the amount of time spent with the brand

• Social engagement - amount of times the promotion is shared with other people

• Sales conversions - tracking specific offer redemption or sales/lead conversions

These are quite a few things we can measure from promotional marketing campaigns; far more than traditional media alone can deliver.

Remember, the key to understanding a campaigns success and ROI is not to look at individual metrics like clicks or impressions, because you will completely misrepresent and misunderstand the campaign results.  Success should be based on measurable business goals that a campaign can help you achieve.

By combining traditional media and promotions you will be able to begin to achieve what many marketers cannot, increased awareness with measurable results and learnings.