Effectiveness has always been important, and more so now, where efficiencies in all expenditure including all aspects of marketing are critical to survival, and growth.
Media as an area that will get looked at, as brands choose between different platforms for the most cost effective and efficient channel. Some may be misguided that using digital media; it may be cheap, and easier to track ‘contact’, but for most, digital media is still only targeting a small selected group.
It seems logical to maintain this approach when investing large sums of money into advertising. As a minimum, clients should be tracking both brand awareness and ad awareness on a rolling monthly basis, both aided and unaided. Frequency of consumption (weekly, monthly, less often) should also be tracked. This data, along with sales and market share data should be shared with agencies in order to develop the best and most accountable advertising campaigns. Many agencies now have sophisticated proprietary software that uses econometric modeling to help set optimum weights, budgets, and effective frequency based on client data inputs. When all of this data is combined, some specific and measurable objectives can be set.
It should always be remembered that effectiveness (particularly for media campaigns) is subjective, and mutual objectives (and how they will be measured) should be agreed by both client and agency prior to the start of the campaign. Only then can the true effectiveness of a campaign be measured.
Digital is arguably the medium most easy to measure in terms of effectiveness. Multiple copies can be run, on different sites, during different dayparts with the results measurable in real time. Clients and agencies can make decisions based on real time data and copy can be adjusted.
