August 8, 2024
Pierre Bourdeau—Director P&C Marketing, CAA Insurance Company
When you spend time and money on marketing, it’s only natural to want to know it’s working. This will help determine where to focus, or re-focus your energy and how to control costs.
So how do you judge results? You’ll need to consider what type of campaign you’re running, and whether you’re looking to drive awareness, consideration, conversion or retention. This is key because measuring awareness will differ from how you measure customer retention and build loyalty.
Industry benchmarks aren’t always ideal in measuring campaign success.
Should a company with a 15-year history use the same benchmarks as one that’s been in business for 40 years? Should a smaller neighbourhood brokerage measure success the same way as one part of a national network? Industry benchmarks are not a one-size-fits-all solution. You’ll see more success by setting your own benchmarks and aiming to beat them in future campaigns.
Different campaign outcomes require different metrics.
You should be tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) based on the desired outcome of your campaign. Start by asking yourself:
- What kind of campaign are you running?
- Who’s your audience—are you casting a wide net or focusing on people who already know and like you?
- What’s the purpose of each tactic?
Measuring Awareness
In this stage, you’re trying to get as many people to notice your brokerage as possible. Focus on tactics that will get you the most impressions for the lowest cost. Sure, traditional mass media can do this easily, but how deep are your pockets? To get more bang for your buck, consider digital radio and video, small market cable TV, community events and sponsorships or paid social media.
If you’re sticking with a digital approach, each digital platform tracks your results. You can also consider using an integration platform management system to track results together, but this isn’t necessary if you’re in the testing phase.
To rate your success, look at:
- Impressions: Total number of people who saw your message
- Reach: How many unique individuals saw your message
- Frequency: The average number of times a person saw your message (aim for the rule of seven: potential customers should see your message at least seven times before deciding to engage with your brand)
- Click Through Rate: Average number of clicks
- Complete Rate: How many people watched your video to the end
- Listen Through Rate: How many people listened to your radio spot to the end
Measuring Consideration
At this stage, you’re trying to get customers to collect all the information they need before deciding to purchase. In this case, you’ll want to choose tactics that let you tell more of your story or drive your target somewhere they can get that information. Think about using longer formats like paid social media, display ads, videos and direct mail to direct people to your website.
To rate your success, look at:
- Click Through Rate: The average number of clicks visitors made on your ads to visit your website
- Page Views: Average number of pages viewed once they’ve landed on your website
- Time on Site: Average time spent on your website
- Completed Quotes: Number of online completed quotes, quote requests or appointments booked while your campaign ran
Measuring Conversion
Here, you’re trying to get people over the finish line by calling or booking an appointment with you. Tactics that could work here include paid social media, display ads, Google ads with a click to call, and emails with click to call or book appointments.
To rate your success, look at:
- Click to Call: Total number of calls received via click-throughs on your ad.
- Appointments Booked: Number of times an appointment was booked by clicking the links in an ad/email.
- Total Sales Generated: How many sales were closed from the campaign (this will require offline matching of data between your online forms and BMS)
- Page Views: Average number of pages viewed per visit
Measuring Retention
If you’re at this stage, you’re talking to people who are already engaged with you—it’s a matter of keeping them as customers and them liking you. This stage is your lowest marketing spend since you’re leveraging existing channels like email that they’ve opted into, organic social media appearing in their feeds, direct mail and sponsorship of events that they’re interested in.
To rate your success, look at:
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- Click Through Rate: Number of clicks from social media posts and emails
- Likes: Number of likes on social media posts
- Shares: Number of shares on social media posts or ads
- Time on Site: How deep your target ventured into your site
Make sure your campaign tactics are optimized to track success.
In order to maximize the results of your investment, ensure that your website is properly tagged for measurement, social ads are optimized for campaign objectives, and focus on the right keywords. You can take things to the next level and invest in installing GA4 on your website. Fair warning, you’ll need to be a little tech-savvy to manage this on your own. It may be a worthwhile investment to engage an agency to do this for you.
Remember, tracking results isn’t a one-and-done thing. You may need to keep tweaking your marketing campaign to get the results you need. What works for one brokerage may not work for everyone else. But by setting goals and carefully monitoring efforts and results, you’ll find what works for you.