How do you know when you’re reaching the right amount of people? How do you know that you’re reaching them in the right ways?
Some companies try the “overkill” approach. They’ll basically gather as many leads as possible and blanket them with advertising. (You probably have one of these culprits sitting in your inbox right now: that store you shopped once, but now get emails from three times a day. Does that make you feel more inclined to shop with them, or less?) Clearly, that approach doesn’t always work; in fact, overexposure and overkill can sour people toward a brand.
Other companies are more concerned with engagement. In a digital age, this buzzword usually sounds synonymous with success. But how do you know that you’re spending your energy effectively to engage with people the right way?
First, you have to be sure that you’re targeting the right audiences at the right time. That’s the only way that high engagement leads to loyalty and sales. Otherwise, you might be spending a lot of time engaging with people who are never going to have an impact on your bottom line. We promise that your company’s stakeholders are going to get confused if you keep reporting high engagement but low revenue. They’ll quickly catch on that those aren’t the same thing.
Plus, you might be engaging actively with the same core group, over and over again. It’s possible to keep pouring your marketing energy into the same buckets, rather than expanding into new pools where large ripples of engagement will actually equate to greater success.
We recommend a combination of tactics. You do want to collect leads and reach out to potential new customers, of course. But you also want to track how those efforts play out. Find out when customers establish contact or complete a sale to learn which of your approaches is actually resonating with the right people. Then, you can cut out the excess efforts you’re making that have nothing to do with converting fans, followers, or buyers.
So, here’s the game plan for successfully measuring your reach: First, pin down what makes people take action to follow up on your touchpoints. It’s a great gauge of successful advertising, so this is where you get started. (For example, maybe they never followed you on social media or clicked one of your ads, but they did see the ad and enjoy the creative. In this case, engagement is not your friend, which is something you need to learn.) Your next move is to track which of your interactions with your brand those customers had in common. (Which ad did most of them see, which messaging resonated?) Then, work backward to detect a pattern. You just need to repeat that pattern to replicate those successes.
The bottom line is that a lot of people will happily prescribe metrics for you to analyze your reach. But the only real way to know is through some strategic experimentation. You’ll want to tailor your metrics to your own specific company and customer base, informed by data and real results.
The options outlined here are just a few of the potential conclusions you might reach. A blended approach is always possible, too. If you need help finding the right stats to showcase your successes and predict growth through your ad reach, Mad 4 Marketing is happy to help you come up with a strategy to conclude what’s right for you.