Evaluate the Use of E-Marketing

Depending on the campaign, monitoring the transmissions on an e-marketing platform may happen in a scheduled form or for flash sales, it can happen straight after the campaign. The data gained from this can inform the direction of e-marketing that is implemented in the future. Before we understand how to evaluate the information from the e-advertising transmissions, firstly let’s take a look at some ways you can monitor the effectiveness of e-advertising.

Monitor the effectiveness of e-advertisement

The most difficult aspect of advertising is determining the campaign's efficacy. If the company is running multiple commercials simultaneously, this gets more challenging. The worst thing you can do is run the ad without checking to see if it works. Money could be squandered on a little newspaper ad space that could be used to fund an outdoor banner everyone could see. It's also possible that a social media ad isn't generating enough clicks. Set a time limit for a specific ad to see if it impacts your sales to determine if it is effective.

Ways to monitor the effectiveness of transmission of electronic advertising

• If you want to validate the conversion ratio reports you receive from your advertising company, you can use a simple tracking method. You can assign specific links to the various sites where your ads appear by using redirects or a link programme.

• When a customer clicks on your ad, they will be directed to your website, but you will be able to see how they found you. This information can be found in your website's log files if you create redirects or reports generated by a link program.

• A simple referral box in your site's shopping cart is a low-tech way to track effectiveness. Before placing an order, you can ask your customers to tell you how they found your website. You can use a drop-down list to allow your customers to choose one of the websites where your advertising appears, or you can use a simple text-entry box where they can type their response.

• This is a good way to find out which sites have the best impression-to-click ratio and the best click-to-buy ratio. This ratio can be difficult to track, so adding a referral box can be very beneficial.

• If you notice that your impressions to clicks ratio is very low, it may be time to retool your advertising. Whether you're using a graphical or text ad, a low ratio indicates that your ads aren't reaching out to potential customers.

• Nothing is worse than starting an ad campaign and expecting big results, only to be met with a deafening silence. It's a good idea to test the waters by starting small before launching a new campaign. The most successful techniques will be shown by tracking which of your advertising converts browsers to purchases.

Choosing the most appropriate method

There is no perfect advertising formula because the approaches vary depending on the type of audience you have. Choosing the best advertising approach for your company will necessitate a series of testing until you find the one that works best for you. It can be difficult, but you must select which media channel you choose to advertise with. A mix of two or three strategies may bring you the greatest amount of customers.

Lack of trust

Despite advertising’s best efforts to reach customers with new means and mindsets, many viewers remain sceptical of advertisements. Pop-ups, auto-playing movies, ads that push the main content below the fold, full-screen ads, ads that slow downloading times and deceptive ads are all examples of this.

Rectify errors

Consumers are more likely to trust other consumers than brands. As a result, user-generated content is on the rise. Rather than being passive bystanders, customers have become active participants in advertising. These days, consumers are considerably more prone to express their emotions through social media. They also communicate with one another significantly more than any advertising campaign can. People frequently seek additional perspectives from friends and social networks when considering a purchase, for example. That's why it's critical to cultivate a following for your brand.

Evaluating the effectiveness of advertisements is an important part of e-marketing. It aids in eliminating ineffective techniques and developing a comprehensive plan to assist your company in growing. You can save money by altering or deleting ads that aren't reaching your target market or getting the reaction you need by arranging frequent audits of e-marketing promotions.

What to evaluate

To evaluate the transmissions of e-marketing advertisements, the following are some areas that you may way to consider looking into to determine if they played a role in the effectiveness of the campaign, or if they played a role in not achieving the expected results. This is also an opportunity to see if there were errors in the transmission that you can rectify for future communications.

The following are suggested considerations of areas to monitor to help evaluate and assess the effectiveness of e-advertising transmission.

Changes in sales

Because most e-marketing programmes aim to increase sales and profits, track how your ads are changing customer behaviour with data. Examine sales before and during the e-marketing campaign and for the next six months afterwards; keep track of the long-term reaction to monitor delayed effects.

Use a questionnaire

Using a questionnaire to talk directly to consumers is a simple and inexpensive technique to evaluate the impact of an e-marketing advertisement. Talk to customers who have been with your organisation for a long time to see how successfully you advertise services and/or products to existing clients. Send questionnaires to a random sample of your target audience to discover how familiar they are with your organisation to assess how an e-marketing advertisement has changed customer perception. To determine which of your e-marketing advertisements is the most persuasive, ask new consumers where they heard about you.

Monitor your progress towards reaching business goals and objectives

Marketing can help you achieve your overall business goals. Therefore, keeping track of your progress toward strategic business goals is beneficial. Each objective should be evaluated regularly. If you see that one is progressing more slowly than the others, your marketing techniques for that target may be ineffective or need to be improved.

Evaluate your strategy in comparison to those of your competitors

If you and your competitors are using comparable techniques, you can compare them to see any differences in frequency, quality, content, or response. Keep track of how many places your competitors' ads appear, how many social media followers they have, how their revenues changed after a campaign, and how they've adjusted their other marketing techniques.

Evaluate the return on investment (ROI)

Even if your marketing methods are assisting you in meeting your company's objectives, they can become unsustainable if they cost more than they generate. Calculate the cost of each campaign, and the number of man-hours put into each project, then compare those expenses to the campaign's profits to get the ROI. If the profit does not change, the campaign may not be worth continuing.

Did it reach your audience?

If an e-advertisement isn’t reaching your audience as planned, it can impact the overall campaign and make it very difficult to measure its effectiveness. Some reasons an e-advertisement does not reach the amount of audience you had planned can be due to placement. Other times, it can be as simple as an error in the actual transmission. For instance, an email campaign can result in not having all emails delivered because they bounced. This might be because of incorrect email addresses recorded, spam e-mails or perhaps expired or deleted email addresses that are still in use. In the case of emails bouncing, there are methods to rectify this transmission.

1. The email list needs to be cleaned up to avoid sending future emails to these addresses
2. Amend the e-marketing strategy by rethinking promotions that aim at gaining new sign-ups/subscribers/customers
3. Consider promotions such as discounts for existing customers when they refer a friend, or discounts for existing customers when a friend purchases a service or product.

Evaluate using campaign reports

Using e-marketing platforms allows you to retrieve analytical data that helps you view the activity and engagement users had with your e-advertisement. Many generate campaign reports that can help identify items that you can evaluate and then compare against the measures of effectiveness stipulated in the e-marketing plan.

Mailchimp has the following resources to help you understand key areas of the campaign reports.

When you open each link, dedicate some time to become familiar with the items you will find in a report, and what each item represents. For example, on the landing page, you can understand the difference between visits versus unique visits. Becoming familiar with these reports is an essential step to understanding them and evaluating them.

• Email campaign reports
• Landing page reports

Record outcomes

Recording outcomes from the evaluation process allow information to be collated and accessible for future e-advertisements.

Recording e-marketing outcomes according to organisation requirements

Recording outcomes and findings is also an analytical tool that can help explain the organisation's purpose when using an outcomes-focused approach. At the personal, service, organisational, and municipal levels, the recording is also required for planning, monitoring, and reviewing progress.

Recording the outcomes of e-marketing is important for the growth of that particular area and the organisation. An organisation can review its results whenever they want and make a plan for changes if necessary.

Plan for improvements

The following plans can help you improve your e-marketing strategies depending on what may need improving.

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

Have you tried your site on a variety of devices? Your clients come to your site from several places, and you want to ensure they all have the same (good) experience. Check that your website works effectively on several devices that your target audience might use, including:

• Mac
• PC
• iPhone
• Android
• Tablets

Make a straightforward path to check-out

Ascertain that your guests can find their way to the finish line with ease. You don't want too many diversions to prevent your customers from clicking "purchase" before leaving your products. Here are a couple of ways to go about it:

• Take a straightforward approach: Keep your site's design to a maximum of two or three colours. Background patterns and strong visuals should be avoided.
• Provide a straightforward and visible "check-out": For example, the traditional shopping cart.
• Linking away from your website is not a good idea: If you must add links, make sure they open in a new tab and never take the customer away from your website. They might not return.

Provide free shipping

Free shipping is something that many online customers demand. Conversions may be lowered if clients are surprised by unexpected shipping expenses at check-out.

Improve your search engine optimisation

If you haven't already, learn about Search Engine Optimisation, or "SEO." This is how you'll get Google to recognise you and make it easier for others to find you in searches.

Use of social media

Nowadays, your company's social media presence is equally as crucial as its website for generating leads. This not only enhances your visibility but also builds trust in your company and products. To keep your client base interested, be sure to set up and maintain at least the following social media platforms:

Submit your information to free directories

There are more free directories than you may know that have already listed your business. The goal is to ensure that your company's information is consistent across all of these platforms.

A search on Yext is a wonderful approach to acquiring a list of all the directories listed by your company. This subscription-based service allows you to effortlessly maintain consistency in your company's information across all directories. When all of your listings match, Google will give you a higher ranking.

Of course, you may save money by doing this manually and claiming/updating all of your ads one at a time, rather than paying for a subscription.

Include video marketing in your strategy

Consider incorporating compelling video material into the mix if you haven't previously. Short, interesting video clips, especially on social media, can be a huge attention grabber. Creating a brief, fast-moving video (typically set to music) that demonstrates an interesting or popular product is a very effective method

Collect feedback

Customer feedback is valuable. When potential new customers see how well you've treated your existing customers, they're more likely to put their trust in you with their money. To avoid unfavourable reviews and a blemish on your reputation, work hard to fix any issues that arise with your customers.

Analyse the data

Knowing what your visitors do when they arrive at your website can help you make crucial decisions about boosting your online sales. Using Google Analytics for this purpose is beneficial since it provides you with a map of how your web traffic is behaving and where your overall map may be enhanced.

Run advertising to increase your visibility

Facebook's ad management system has recently seen significant enhancements. These types of tools are pretty useful for online marketing. While Facebook advertising may not directly lead to conversions, they are incredibly effective at raising awareness of your content and generating traffic to your website, both of which are required before purchases occur.

Rectify any errors in transmission

Any errors in transmission Errors in transmission can occur easily if you fail to test your e-advertisements. You should be conducting tests on the e-advertisements you do most often, including:

• Email/E-newsletter sends
• Website (Home page and any other busy pages)
• Landing pages
• Ad groups
• Social media posts (sponsored).

Testing is a great way to determine if there were any errors in transmission, making it easy to know what needs rectifying and how you can plan for improving your strategy.

Improving the e-marketing strategy

Any future e-advertisements need to take into consideration how past e-marketing communications have resulted and how amending the e-marketing strategy can better aim at meeting the business goals and objectives. The idea is to continuously improve, try different tactics, stay competitive and on-trend, and focus on the message, audience and expected outcomes.

Watch the following video for an overview of an e-marketing plan and strategy. Keep in mind, that some deciding factors in the plan can be provided by others in the business and stakeholders.

Knowledge Check

Work through the following set of activities. Click the arrows to navigate between the tasks.