Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

ROI is the right concept, but measuring it isn't nearly so easy or straightforward. Whatever you're advertising is affected by so many things in addition to the print advertising that you could spend a lot of time and effort trying to measure the fifth digit to the right of the decimal point, while the number on the left goes negative.

The question, of course, is "What's the profit on the incremental sales generated by the advertising?" That's your ROI.

My advice for print advertising is to construct a simple experiment where you have a professional market researcher contact people in your target audience. Ask them a series of questions about the brands/companies they are aware of, how they'd rate them, etc.

Then let them read 6 or 8 print ads in a magazine or trade journal environment. You ad would be one of them. Then ask them the same questions you did before they read the ad. And then ask them direct questions about your company/brand, whether they recall seeing an ad for your brand, etc.

Finally, ask them how likely they would be to purchase your brand. That should give you some feel for how effective the advertising is.

A professional market researcher can give you some norms that would apply to your industry ... or you can add a control cell that doesn't see your advertising.

That's about as close as you'll get to a really good measure of ROI ... unless you have a lot of money and patience.

Gee, I've got an easier way to measure return on investment of your print advertising.

Go to your advertising department and ask them to create ads that include a response from your customers. For example, I'd ask a customer to clip a coupon, present the advertisment to get the deal, or something that gets you a physical piece of your advertisment. Instruct your sales staff that when customers turn in their "Ad" or coupon, they must write on the back of those ads amd coupons how much money the customer spent making a purchase.

At the end of the promotion, gather up all the ads/coupons turned in, and add up the sales dollars generated. Then, go back to your advertising department, and ask them to produce invoices for the print ads you've placed. Write the total down on a piece of paper.

Now, compare the numbers. How did your ad do? Did it cover the cost of printing the ads?

I may not have a marketing degree, but, I know that tracking sales generated to the ad that produced it has certainly cut the wasted ad dollars in my business.

My print ads would generate 14 percent response rates on a regular basis once I found which print media to use and the right offer that triggered responses and sales. I'll put that kind of track record up against anyone.

Oh, by the way, get yourself a big binder, and begin recording your ad campaigns and results. You may find it very interesting when the print ad sales guy calls, and you pull out a big book of results......

Then again, this same book makes for good reading on slow days. You can look back and think about what you could do to change your ads and make them pull even better. Ahh, isn't advertising fun?

Darcy Moen
(Customer Loyalty Network)

Hi Joanne,

Good input so far. I would add the concept of direct response print advertising’s A/B split testing. Basically many publications will allow (small fee) advertisers to run two versions of an ad in a single issue. Example – with a circulation of 100,000 -- 50% will have an A version of the ad and the other 50% will have a B version of the ad. The difference between the A and B versions can only be tested by one element at a time, such as the headline, a photo, or the offer etc. There will always be a clear winner, A or B. The winner becomes the standard for the next version to test against. Over time the advertiser will “evolve” a great producing ad.


Link to -- Multi Variable Testing: Web Site Testing Beyond the AB Test:
https://www.fortpoint.com/media/articles/beyond_the_ab_test.html


hope this helps,

- Steve

Wow, what an incredible load of quality answers here already! This is one of the "favorite Q&A threads" I'm adding to my personal file.

This might be a good one for Val's next newsletter feature, too.

Joanne, thanks for posting the question!

- Shelley