Branding campaigns are critical and a must-have to build a long-term business. Here are five ways you can measure ROI on your next campaign.
The internet has always been used as a performance platform, mainly cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-lead (CPL) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA). In the current economic climate, most marketers need to justify their investment and hence, performance based marketing is key. However, we must not forget that to build a long-term business, branding is critical.
Consumers are still buying products with branding that they like to associate with and also the image that they wish to project. Hence, to get your products and services to stick in the consumers' mind, branding is inevitable.
Five ways for marketers to measure the ROI for branding campaigns are:
1. Return on engagement (ROE)
How much time do users spend engaging with your products and services? When a user surfs to a content site and when he sees your ad, is he engaging with your ad creative? Engagement can be measured by the time spent looking at your product info, service info or even just playing a game within the banner. All of the above can be executed via rich media creative. ROE has been used for some campaigns to measure branding effectiveness.
2. Reach and frequency
Commonly used in TV commercials, reach and frequency can also be measured on the internet. How may times users see your ad and how many users in total saw your ad can determine the reach and frequency. In fact, compared to TV commercials, measurement on the net is probably more accurate.
3. Brand engagement on video commercials
One measurement you can consider is how many seconds your video commercial has been exposed. As video commercials can be measured now by the number of seconds they have been streamed or delivered, we can easily track the brand engagement. For instance, if Mercedes Benz is running a video commercial online on various sites, they can gather the total number of seconds that their video commercial has been streaming or delivered across all sites. The final report for brand engagement could be that the commercial delivered 10 million seconds to 250,000 unique viewers.
4. Internet surveys
Sometime traditional ways of doing things still work fine. Before each campaign, we can launch a survey to gather the brand awareness of your products and services. After the campaign, you can launch the similar survey to gather the feedback from the readers. It is a straightforward way to gather feedback directly from readers, and since it is all online, it is much easier to manage and execute.
5. Owning the space
Many marketers have also neglected the fact that the internet platform is just like print, billboards, TV and radio. If a brand consistently owns the space in a certain time slot or ad space, it will create a consistent branding effect. For instance, watch companies like to sponsor the clock face before the prime time news on TV, and the brand is established among viewers. The same applies online -- if a brand owns a space permanently like a food or shopping site, the brand will be established as the one users will associate with. So own a space where you wish to establish your products and services so that users can consistently see your brand when they access the space.
As we build our businesses, if we are in for the long term, inevitably we must establish our brand name among our client base. Despite the tough market situation, businesses with strong branding can still grow. Without a strong branding, a business will not be able to stand the turbulence and have a high chance of failing. So start to build your brand, especially in cyberspace, as it takes years to build one.
Raymond Teoh is assistant vice-president of the Interactive Business Unit in Singapore Press Holdings.