We are living in the age of Big Data. Understanding your target audience, personalising your communication, comparing different databases, and reading diagrams are part of everyday life now. But how about measuring ad performance?
Measuring ads - is it worth it?
When you spend a lot of time, energy, and money on your advertisement, you want it to be as perfect as possible. Even years before, companies used to measure their ads’ performance. By today, more and more advertisers have realized the fact that spending a little part of their budget on understanding emotional performance can make their ads’ results much better. Sometimes a little change, like a different narration, a simpler packshot, or another type of music can bring you much closer to your marketing goals. So if your question is whether it is worth it to measure your ads’ performance, the answer is: YES!
How to measure ad performance?
Let’s say, your sales numbers are growing. The question is legitimate: is it the result of your discounts, trade marketing activities, online videos, or the advertisement that was broadcast everywhere? While there are some marketing models to get these insights, it is hard to know the exact sales effects coming from each platform. One thing is for sure: a well-built-up advertisement strengthens your product in a visible way.
More than a mere boost on sales numbers
A campaign or a platform is usually much more than a mere boost on sales numbers. It shapes the personality of your brand, dictates what lives in viewers' minds about your brand, communicates about the company's efforts towards a better world, and establishes a conversation with the consumer. These are all things that are hard to wrap into ROI but are meaningful in the grand scheme of things.
So even if you are not sure about the exact sales numbers brought by a TV spot, measuring its effects on your target audience and improving the execution based on those insights can lead you to better advertising. There are plenty of options when it comes to ad measurement: focus groups, interviews, home visits, quantitative research methodologies like questionnaires, and of course, neuromarketing.
5 things to consider before choosing your research method
Having versatile options has its bright and dark sides. You can make your own choice, but how to be smart and choose the more suitable method for the actual research goal? Synetiq has collected 5 things that should be considered when choosing the perfect research methods.
1.Goal
What is the goal of your research? Do you need to show numeric data for the head office to prove the effectiveness of your ad, or simply to understand your target audience? Do you want to get to know your target group’s conscious thoughts, or would it be better to take a look at their non-conscious minds? Depending on your goals, each research method has its pros and cons.
Clear questions to be answered
Try to set up clear goals for your research and choose the method that covers the most questions that need to be answered. Also, consider combined methods: in the age of big data, not only the methods are versatile, but you should be too.
2. Time
Usually one of the most critical parts of ad creation is the pressure of timing. Before getting on-air you have to catch a lot of deadlines, which is, let’s be honest, quite stressful. When you are already late with your copy, having time for measurement sounds like a dream.
Here, we have to mention 2 important facts:
There are methodologies that can deliver you results in a very fast way. These can be: drawing insights from an existing database, organizing fast online research, or using Synetiq’s 72h pre-test product, which can bring you results and insights in less than 3 days after sharing the copy.
You can do research even after you are on-air. While advertisers usually spend more time with their beloved ads before sharing them on some channels, measuring their results and making small changes can be done even later. Also, when you want to grow and reach your goals, spending money and time on widening your knowledge is not just essential but can be cost-effective too in the long term. Measuring your ads and learning more about your target group will benefit you at your next rushy ad creation period.
3. Product
For the very first moment, you might think that your product doesn’t influence your research methodologies. However, it has a strong influence on your results. When you are a love brand, viewers consciously evaluate every single step of yours in a positive way. This means it is hard to get real feedback on your current advertisement until it is too late. Understanding non-conscious reactions in the case of love brands is suggested, as these insights can benefit you in the long term.
In the case of a new product, a combination of conscious and unconscious evaluation can work the best. Viewers often say different things than their honest thoughts because of some social desirability and other biases. Thus, getting a picture of both sides can give you real feedback on your brand and product, as emotional data is free of these biases. Risky campaigns can perform differently on the conscious and non-conscious level, thus you have to be smart when you draw conclusions.
Synetiq: an example
Synetiq has measured 2 ads of the same vitamin for babies: one ad had a narration on a baby voice, the other with the mom. While consciously the future mom target group supported the kid version (as that was more “cute”), non-consciously they got frustrated from that voice-over. Later, during an honest discussion, they confessed that they did not like the baby voice at all, but as future moms, they felt pressure to say they like that version.
4. Budget
Next to timing, a tight budget is another sensitive issue advertisers have to face. Depending on your budget, you can choose from cheaper quantitative methodologies to a bit more expensive, complex products. Yet, we encourage you to be brave to spend a little more on research, as understanding your target group can benefit you in the future.
Lifelong learning
Sometimes it is hard to concentrate on long-term benefits when you have short-term goals like delivering the idea, ad, or campaign on time and within the budget. But you probably plan to make more ads in the future, don’t you? What you learn now, can benefit you later, especially when it comes to choosing multi-client, combined solutions (for example neuromarketing with a quantitative questionnaire and focus group). These combinations give you a wider picture of your target audience.
5. Level of understanding
Depending on how deeply you want to understand your target group’s thoughts, you can choose between qualitative or quantitative data. Each of them has its pros and cons, but each can fulfill different needs and goals.
Whether you want to get feedback and some data from your ad or you want to learn about consumer decision-making processes, you can choose between a wide range of research methods.
Quantitative & Qualitative methods
Quantitative methodologies provide tracking, longitudinal data, segmentation, seasonality, while they also help to understand consumers’ demographical and ecological characteristics. With these, you can understand the conscious opinion of a bigger group.
Meanwhile, qualitative options can help you to understand your target group deeper. These methodologies, even if your respondents are truthful, only tell you the conscious opinion of your audience.
Neuromarketing
If you are curious about non-conscious, honest reactions, neuromarketing is the perfect choice for you.
Here at Synetiq, we combine our measurements with questionnaires, so you can get a 360-degree view of your target group’s opinion. Also, compared to qualitative and quantitative methodologies, we can show reactions second by second. This means that we can pinpoint both problem areas and emotionally strong parts. Why is it good? When you ask someone about an experience they had, they usually evaluate it as a whole, so nuances get lost. Order bias can also occur - people remember more the first and last thing they have seen, which can conceal processes that happen in them during watching the ad. A second-by-second analysis gives you a real and deep picture of your target group’s thoughts.
If you would like to know if neuromarketing is a good fit to reach your marketing goals more efficiently, check out this article. Also, read the most frequently raised questions and never hesitate to contact us!
written by Petra Varhelyi
