Television advertising is still an incredibly effective way to influence audiences. Yet despite the impact TV can have, it presents a problem for marketers. It’s harder to measure its effectiveness which can sometimes be off putting but that doesn’t need to be the case.
Digital marketing channels have more immediate and easily accessible metrics to prove success. This doesn’t mean that you can’t monitor and report the effectiveness of TV, you just have to do it differently. So let's look at how to measure the performance of TV ads.
Setting objectives
When you begin a marketing campaign you will have some clear objectives about what you’re trying to achieve. These objectives will help to frame the overall success of the campaign so be clear about what you’re trying to achieve such as increasing sales, improving brand awareness or driving web traffic or footfall. You should keep your objectives in mind when reporting any campaign but it is especially important with TV.
Increase sales and enquiries
The main metric is ultimately increased sales. An obvious way to monitor the success of a campaign is to compare sales data before during and after the completion of the campaign. Alternatively, you could make revenue comparisons against previous sales periods and forecasts for the year.
Track website traffic and online searches
Looking beyond a revenue upturn, the impact of a TV campaign can be measured by monitoring web traffic and online search data during and following a TV campaign. Using monitoring tools such as Google analytics you can track spikes that coincide with the airing of your television ad.
Brand lift and recall
As mentioned earlier it’s important to be aware of your objectives to effectively monitor a campaign. If your objective isn’t to drive immediate sales but to crate brand awareness then web traffic probably won’t fit the bill. This is where platforms like Neilsen come into play, allowing you to conduct brand lift studies which will enable you to quantify the impact of audience impact from your TV ad.
Social Media Monitoring
Social listening tools such as Brandwatch will allow you to monitor social channels for mentions of your TV ad or brand. By tracking hashtags, likes, shares and mentions you can get an understanding of audience perception towards your TV ads.
There are other approaches that can be employed such as focus groups but ultimately the ad effectiveness can be measured against the campaign objectives using a mix of both traditional and modern methods.
Analysing the impact of Television advertising does take a little more effort, however, it’s arguably a reasonable effort reward exchange when you consider the results that TV can deliver.
If you’d like to find out how TV could work for you, email call 0117 932 3001.