Measure the impact of your advertisement in your customers’ minds. Collect opinions, feelings and associations that will lead you to improvement of the next campaign.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”.John Wanamaker
If you work in advertising, you must know what it feels like. Marketing specialists are constantly searching for ways to measure the advertising effectiveness to optimize it next time. Thanks to high-tech tools they can measure a lot but not everything.
Companies communicate towards clients in multiple channels, therefore the customer journey has become extremely complex. The final conversion is a result of offline campaigns, campaigns on various online platforms and also personal recommendations among customers. Therefore, measuring techniques are not as easy as some people would expect. To evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign objectively, you can:
calculate various metrics of online campaigns (CTR, CPC, impressions, conversion rate, ROAS, brand mentions, etc.)
conduct a survey to find out the effect a particular ad has on the perception of your customers.
Why is surveying an integral part of measuring advertising effectiveness?
The goal of each campaign is different and according to that we choose how to measure the effectiveness. Some campaigns are launched to increase sales of a particular product, some campaigns aim to increase brand awareness. Some campaigns include both.
It might seem that in today's world of big data, only numbers must suffice. Yes, numbers are necessary, so be sure to measure the effectiveness of your ads using numerical metrics. At present, however, the main measure of successful companies is not the product, nor price, but customer experience. And that can no longer be fully expressed in numbers.
With an advertising campaign, we affect what customers think about our product or the brand as a whole (positioning). We need to find out if we are doing well, because our efforts cost a lot of time, human resources and money. Thoughts of our customers cannot be expressed in numbers, people express them in words. This is why surveying is an integral part of measuring advertising effectiveness.
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What to measure in an advertising effectiveness survey? Which questions to ask?
A survey is a space for finding out subjective information (attitudes, feelings, values, etc.). When measuring advertising effectiveness, focus on the following areas or get inspired by our ready-made, fully editable survey template on advertising perception and effectiveness. survey template on advertising perception and effectiveness.
Brand recognition
Can your audience identify your brand among others only by visual symbols and products? Add a video or an image to your survey and ask about the recognition.
Can you identify this advertisement? (dichotomic question - yes/no)
If you do identify, could you name the product and brand name? (open-ended question)
Brand awareness
Can your audience recall information, emotions or general information about your brand? Is your brand a top-of-mind association? If your brand awareness increases, customer loyalty also gets stronger and Word of Mouth starts to work. People will return to you regularly and tell each other about your brand. Your acquisition costs per customer will get lower because people simply start acquiring one another and that is a dream of every businessman. That is why you need to care about brand awareness. The following questions help you test if your advertisement has contributed to bigger brand awareness.
When you think of the product in the advertisement, what brand name comes to your mind? (open-ended question)
Have you heard of this brand name before? (dichotomic question - yes/no)
Does any other brand come to your mind while thinking about our brand? (open-ended question)
What emotions do you feel after watching the advertisement? (open-ended question or multiple choice question with the option “other”)
Can you name a few features that you attribute to this product? (open-ended question)
After watching the advertisement, can you describe the brand by 3-5 adjectives? (open-ended question)
Can you finish this sentence? People should buy the product from the advertisement because… (open-ended question)
After watching the advertisement, what would be the main reason you would buy the product? (open-ended question)
Brand consideration
Is your audience interested in purchasing your products? Ask people in your advertising perception survey if the advertisement changed their mind about purchasing the product.
How likely would you purchase our product after watching this advertisement? (star question or another scale)
How motivating did you find the advertisement? (star question or another scale)
These are just a few tips, so feel free to come up with your own questions. As mentioned above, you are looking for subjective but concrete information that will help you elevate the effectiveness of your advertisement. What might be the goals of your campaigns except for introducing a product and increasing turnover?
passing on the message about new sustainable production
sharing the news about new delivery method
showing transparency of the origin of ingredients
communicating the product to a new target group
Do not forget to test if campaigns influence your audience as planned. Ask questions that will shine a light on your specific goal.
Creating the survey in Survio
Survio offers 19 question types at your disposal. Be careful when choosing the question type. An improper question type can ruin validity of the data. Consider if each question collects data that you can statistically evaluate or whether they contain text answers that provide subjective information (opinions, attitudes, associations, feelings, etc.). Based on this, select either a closed-ended or open-ended question.
You can edit all questions in the survey builder:
add and delete answers,
set up a condition of obligatory question,
add an image or video,
choose the format of the answer (e-mail, number, date, text),
customize design of your survey to match your brand colors,
add your logo or your own picture as a background.
By all such details you can make the survey not only more understandable but also trustworthy for your respondents and increase the response rate. Don’t forget to test your survey in a preview, send it for example to your colleagues. That is how you eliminate all typos and mistakes that could affect the quality of collected data.
Always choose channels that are the most convenient for your target group. You can share your survey through one or two channels or you can combine all these channels together. Just find a combination that ensures you get enough completed questionnaires!
How to work with the results?
When carrying out the survey in Survio, you can watch real-time analyzed results and use a variety of charts and tables as a basis for your further decisions. Use Survio’s reports that are automatically generated into various formats to present data in the most convenient way for your audience (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, CSV or Google Sheets). Getting results can technically be the tail end of the survey. However, you are a half way through the process of boosting your advertising impact.
Did people like your campaign but missed your main message? Take it as an incentive to concentrate more on clear communication in the next campaign. Organize focus groups to find out what speaks to your target group the most (design, actual phenomenons etc.).
People recognize the product after the campaign but are not motivated to buy it? Consider if the product really can meet the needs of today’s consumers. Think about new features of the product, think about ways to communicate them.
Can people see clearly that the product is a solution to their needs?
Can people see the value of the product after getting in contact with the ad?
And are you really communicating to the right target group or is some retargeting needed?
These are just examples to show you that the results from your survey should be a kicker for new changes and improvements.
Key takeaways
An advertising effectiveness survey helps you find out subjective information (attitudes, feelings, values, etc.) about how your audience perceives the advertisement.
In such a survey you are researching how your advertisement influences brand recognition, brand awareness and brand consideration.
Obtained data serve as a basis for you to come up with strategic changes that will elevate your campaigns to the next level.
Now it is your turn!
Create your own survey and measure the effectiveness of your advertisement. Consumer behavior is changing constantly. Having mapped what your customers respond to and what they find attractive is a key to a successful campaign.