In today’s marketing landscape, it feels like everything is trackable and measurable. And to some extent, it is. While the ubiquity of analytics data makes certain things easier, it also requires a strategic approach to what you measure and how you interpret results.
I’ve watched a lot of marketers get frustrated when it comes to tracking and measuring campaign performance. I get it; it’s a tough part of the job. But the main theme I’ve noticed is a misalignment between goals and tracking methods. See, there are two distinct categories of marketing, as well as two distinct ways of tracking.
Different Goals, Different Expectations
In case you haven’t guessed it already, the two different categories I’m going to talk about are: direct marketing and awareness marketing. They have different goals and should therefore be measured differently. When you measure a direct campaign using awareness metrics, you’re going to be disappointed. Same for if you try to measure an awareness campaign with direct marketing tactics (the latter being the more common flip flop).
Direct marketing consists of tactics and messaging that drive users to take a particular, measurable action. Direct marketing can be online or offline, but my focus is on digital tactics.
Direct Marketing
A common example of a direct online marketing tactic would be a free download. There’s an ad or piece of content that drives the user to a landing page. The single, clear call to action is “download.” You can track exactly how many users click on the ad, view the content, hit the landing page, and download the free resource. The user takes a direct path, a direct action that’s measureable.
Direct marketing can be focused on direct sales—mostly for e-commerce businesses—or just direct action. For the purpose of this post, I’m grouping them together, but below are examples of both.
Direct Marketing – Action
This Facebook ad takes you to a free 14-day program. You put in your email to get the free program and then (I assume) they work to upsell you on the backend. A user takes a direct action (download), which is trackable through the entire process.
Direct Marketing – Sales
This ad skips the freebie and jumps right to a low-ticket sales offer. With this type of ad, the business can know exactly how much was spent on ads and how much revenue was generated.
Awareness Marketing
Awareness marketing encompasses pretty much everything else. It includes traditional mass media like TV and print, but also online marketing that doesn’t have a direct component to it.
For example, this ad:
It’s a display ad with a general “learn more” call to action that takes you to the company’s homepage. There’s no direct action to take. Whether this advertiser knows it or not, this ad falls under the awareness marketing category. If I need their service now, maybe I call or contact them through their website. But as an awareness marketing ad, the purpose is more to, well, build awareness. Now I know this company’s name and (kind of) what they do. If I ever need their services, maybe they’ll cross my mind as an option.
Why Measure Differently
The difference in goals between these very different types of marketing means an inherent difference in how they need to be tracked. If you track direct marketing tactics using awareness marketing measurement, you’re missing out on important data. More commonly, if you try to track awareness marketing using direct marketing measurement, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Most marketers want to tie every tactic to the bottom line, which is becoming increasingly possible as technology advances. But not all marketing is about direct sales. Awareness marketing is just that—marketing that reaches your audience, so when they need you, they’re aware of you.
The biggest danger of trying to measure awareness marketing using direct marketing tracking is you’ll stop tactics that are actually working. You can’t expect to see direct conversions when you’re doing awareness marketing, and that’s sometimes a tough concept to grasp in today’s trackable world.
How to Measure Direct Marketing
For direct marketing tactics, we can measure all sorts of fun things—click-through rates, landing page views, and all the other analytics available. But it all comes down to conversions. How many people took the action you wanted them to? That’s what ultimately determines the success of direct marketing.
Free Download
If your campaign goal is for people to download your free 14-day workout, then you track success based on how many people do so. And if there’s an upsell right after the free download (for example, to join a membership site $17/month), you can track the conversion rate on that offer and further tie marketing to revenue. Regardless of whether the upsell comes right away or in an email later, you can still track the path of any sales from the ad via the free download and eventual purchase. That’s the magic of direct marketing metrics.
Direct Sales
If you’re driving users directly to a sales page, then your primary conversion goal is sales. You can track return on these initial sales as well as any revenue generated from upsells or future campaigns.
The tracking on direct sales marketing is slick—you know what you spent and what you earned in return. Boom: ROI. But as most of us know, taking cold traffic—people who have never heard of us—and turning them into sales is no easy feat.
How do you warm up an audience to make them more receptive to direct sales campaigns? You use direct marketing with a freebie and nurture…or you use awareness marketing to educate an audience about what you offer.
How to Measure Awareness Marketing
With awareness marketing, measurement is much more vague and much less time-bound. After all, how do you measure “awareness”? And how do you account for the long-term benefits of that awareness? This is where you have to be purposeful about setting goals, tracking what you care about, and interpreting your analytics with your metaphorical awareness filter on.
You’ll want to track the important data like reach, frequency, and engagement. Beyond that, what you measure and what you consider success depend on your goals.
A few of the metrics you could use to measure awareness campaigns include:
- Website traffic
- Website engagement
- Engagement on social media
- Customer sentiment
- Purchase trends over time
Because awareness marketing is more vague than direct marketing, let’s use an example.
In January, ABC Company runs a direct campaign to a specific audience segment and gets a 1% conversion rate with a 50% ROI. Not stellar.
For the rest of Q1, ABC Company runs awareness campaigns to that same audience, letting them know how ABC Company can solve their problems. No direct sales CTA, just strong messaging about the company and its widgets.
In April, ABC Company turns on the direct marketing campaign again, to this same audience. This time, they see a 3% conversion rate, lower ad costs, and higher average order volume for a 175% ROI.
So the hypothetical awareness campaign can be considered a success. It worked to warm up the audience and make them more receptive to sales.
But we couldn’t know whether our work in February and March worked until the end of April. In our on-demand, immediate-gratification world, waiting for the right awareness marketing metrics is tough. And, of course, we know life doesn’t happen in a vacuum like it does in this blog post, so you look for other factors that could affect sales from January – April.
The success of the measurement of this awareness campaign would be heavily reliant on knowing goals, metrics, and the approach ahead of time. Measuring awareness marketing requires planning and patience.
My Challenge to You
I challenge you to take a look at your marketing campaigns. Which ones are direct and which ones are awareness marketing? Have you been using the correct tracking metrics, or have your expectations been off?
You can also revisit your old campaigns. Was there one you thought was working, but the metrics just didn’t show it? Take a look with your new direct vs. awareness lens…maybe you were right.
Let’s Recap
The main thing I want you to take away from this post is that different campaign goals need to be measured differently.
When you try to measure the success of an awareness campaign using direct marketing metrics, you’re going to have a bad time. And vice versa.