How do you measure the effectiveness of your advertising? Do you look
only at whether or not you have had an increase in sales or enquires
subsequent to the publication of an advertisement, or do you include product or
brand awareness in your evaluations?
The most suitable criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of
advertising, depends on a number variables, such as the advertising goals, the
type of media used, the cost of evaluation, the value that the business or
advertising agency places on evaluation measures, the level of precision and
reliability required, who the evaluation is for and the budget. It is difficult to accurately measure the
effectiveness of a particular advertisement, because it is affected by such
things as the amount and type of prior advertising, consumer brand awareness,
the availability of cost effective evaluation measures, the placement of the
advertising and a range of things about the product itself, such as price and
even the ability of the target audience to remember.
There are a number of different models for measuring advertising
effectiveness.
·
E. Pomerance suggests that advertising agencies
might attempt to measure effectiveness under the five headings of Profits,
Sales, Persuasion, Communication and Attention (Wheatley, 1969, p.91). He uses a cube diagram to illustrate how to
evaluate advertising that recognises the effect of repeated exposures
(Wheatley, 1969, p.93).
·
Lavidge and Steiner suggest a model for ‘predictive
measurement of advertising effectiveness’ (Wheatley, 1969, p.7), which
recognises various stages of purchasing behaviour, and suitable measures for
each stage. Kotler and Armstrong call these stages, 'Buyer readiness stages'
(1996, p.463-464). They may be viewed
like this: Awareness Ù Knowledge Ù Liking Ù Preference Ù Conviction Ù Purchase (Wheatley,
1969, p.7).
·
Kotler and Armstrong suggest that two areas need to
be evaluated in an advertising programme.
They call them the ‘communication effect’ and ‘the sales effect (1996,
p.507-508). To evaluate the sales
effect, company information about sales and sales expenditure would be
needed. To evaluate the communication
effect, Kotler and Armstrong (1996, p.507-508), suggest using a number of
research tests. They suggest that these
evaluation measures are not perfect.
Surveys and brand/product recognition tests after an advertising
campaign are sometimes used in a two pronged way to advertise and gather
evaluation information.
Effectiveness of online advertising is sometimes measured in terms of
the number of page views collected through various forms of counters and search
engine page rankings.
One cost effective way of evaluating the effectiveness of the
advertisement in terms of sales and movement towards purchasing is what Kotler
and Armstrong (1996, p.480) call Integrated
Direct Marketing. It is marketing that has a response section which can
lead to more appropriate communication between the company and the prospect.
This can also give the company the opportunity to trigger further movement towards
purchasing, so it has the potential to have a greater impact on sales than a
similar advertisement without the response section. It is not only online
advertisers who are using this method of requiring an email contact address and
giving the customer a choice of receiving more information or newsletters about
their product/s. Vouchers and coupons have been used in a similar way.
All advertisements have the potential to trigger some form of
purchasing behaviour.
Effectiveness may have more to do with the readiness of the viewer to
consider the benefits the advertisement promotes, than the advertisement
itself. It may be more cost effective
to invest in finding creative ways to measure the effectiveness of an
advertising campaign that is part of an advertising campaign in itself, but at
the end of the day your goals are the key.
It may come down to estimating how happy you are with what you are
doing.
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Reference:
Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G. (1996). Principles of Marketing. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc.
Wheatley, J. (Editor). (1969). Measuring Advertising Effectiveness.
Selected Readings. Ontario: AMA Reprint
Series. Richard D. Irwin Inc.
