Setting Goals For Your Advertisements

If you don’t have an idea of what you want to achieve with your advertisement, it’ll be difficult to determine how successful the ad will be. Setting goals is crucial to advertising because you have to measure its effectiveness and impact in order to make changes and create new strategy. Goals can vary from increased sales, product or service awareness, to more website traffic. You can find out if you are getting a return on your investment by laying out what you hope to accomplish with your advertising campaign. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Be specific

When setting your goal, make it something measurable. To make your goals specific, use numbers. For example, let’s say you want a $300 increase in sales for the month of June, generated by your print ad in the local news magazine. The key is to be realistic: goals may not be met by one ad or over night.

2. Track Sales

Create a spreadsheet so that when you start advertising, you can gauge how your sales are improving or going downhill. Start weekly tracking about a month before your ad runs to set a starting point average. During your advertising campaign, watch how your sales fluctuate. Leave some space for a post-ad period for those who may respond to the ad in the weeks following its publication. If you’re including a coupon in your ad, use a specific code to the ad that was published.

3. Track Awareness

A major misconception about advertising is that it produces immediate results. It is possible, but the most common result of advertising is brand awareness. We’ll save explaining how to determine what your brand is for another day. But for now, keeping track of this kind of increase is important because your ad could be working without you even knowing. Also, people want to know who you are before purchasing your product or service. Keep an eye on your social media sites for increased traffic during your campaign and watch for traffic to your website. Both are obvious indicators of increased brand awareness.

By utilizing these tactics, you can draw a reasonable conclusion about whether your advertising is working or falling flat of your expectations. Instead of going in blind, be smart about how you can advertise and get the most out of it by setting specific and measurable goals.