How to Analyze the Success of a Media Campaign

When it comes to media buys, “how do we measure campaign success?” is the million-dollar question. It’s also a fair question, considering that media campaigns represent the bulk of a client’s marketing budget. These days, there’s a critical need to demonstrate return on investment.

My response is always the same: We measure and analyze the key metrics that matter the most to each client. We need to understand how our client defines success before we can even think about analyzing it:

• Increased sales of their newest device?
• Increased site traffic or call volume?
• More engagement on their website?

In many cases, clients haven’t truly analyzed what success means to them. They just know they want their media budget to work hard and make them look good. By working with clients, we can clearly define success metrics and set expectations. Once this is done, we use the identified metrics or KPIs (key performance indicators) as our guide to designing a winning campaign.

Analyzing Success

Once the planning is done and the campaign begins, it’s time to measure and analyze success. Uniquely crafted campaigns require unique tracking, measurement and customization. At HCB Health, we track as many variables as possible — not just the KPIs — to get a clear understanding from start to finish of the campaign.

We also track consistently, offering updated results for each client before they request them. We provide elaborate, detailed dashboards for the clients that crave that level of information. We also create simplified, informative reports that focus on just the necessary metrics for clients that don’t want to feel overwhelmed by all the data.

Success Requires Insight

But measuring success requires more than just the ability to mash numbers into a pretty format. Our team really dives into the numbers to understand the results. We read between the lines to provide insightful, interpretive results that can be used to optimize the current campaign and help design future campaigns.

Success is a collaborative effort. It stems from strategic planning and an open dialog with each client to ensure we’re all on the same page. By identifying success metrics and creating a game plan before launch, the process of measuring and analyzing is easy — which makes our team AND our clients very happy.