Updated on 20.03.2023
If you don’t measure, you won’t know what to optimize. In other words, the success of a digital marketing campaign relies on measuring the results and testing different ways of advertising, until reaching the one that brings you the optimal results.
The online environment offers us a variety of tools through which we can monitor the performance of a campaign, but we must know how to use them in order to get the desired outcomes. Here are some tips to consider when measuring the effectiveness of a campaign.
Set SMART goals
The first step in the process of measuring your campaign is setting your objectives. Determine from the start what are the results you want to get and start developing the campaign and implementing the measurement methods based on them.
Depending on your business traits, your goals may be to increase sales (for products or services), increase the number of subscriptions to a newsletter, raise your website traffic, prompt the download of a brochure or an eBook, increase your views on a video, and many others. Remember that whatever your goal is you should set a time limit and show at least one indicator of progress.

In order to be as clear and structured as possible, we will offer an example of this process. Let’s say we have an online store that sells homemade pasta. A SMART goal would be: increase the number of sales from 40 in the current month to 60 in the next couple of months. Thus, the objective is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Set your target audience
Your target audience isn’t made of all people between 18 and 65 years old. Take into account what you offer and target only the segments interested in these products or services. This will help you easily measure the results and transform your campaign into an investment, not an expense.
If we consider our online pasta store, our target audience will consist of: people who love pasta dishes, who are passionate about cooking or who watch culinary shows. Regarding their age, we can start at 18 (mainly because the preparation process is easy) and reach even 65. Thus, we will establish multiple target groups (primary and secondary), each of them presenting a different need and distinctive communication messages.
When to start measuring a campaign?
Once you’ve set your goals and your target audience, the next step is to implement your campaigns. One of the main benefits of an online campaign is that the results are seen shortly after its development. That being said, in order to determine exactly what works and what doesn’t, you should assign a longer period of time for monitoring and testing. Test several landing pages, messages or images and see which one performs best.
Tools for measuring the results of a campaign
Regardless of the chosen advertising platform (Facebook, Google Ads), you can obtain valuable data about the performance of your campaigns (number of clicks, impressions, click-through rate, cost per click, number of conversions, conversion rate and so on). If you own an online store or any other type of business that involves a user’s action on a website (newsletter subscription, personal data collection), it’s imperative to implement the conversion code (for Google Ads campaigns) or the Facebook Pixel.
This will provide you with an overview of the performance of your campaigns, ad groups, or keywords. Based on this data, you can easily identify your most sought after products or services, the areas you need to improve on, the time frames between which users convert, and many other useful indicators. Then, based on this information, you will know what works and what needs to be optimized.
However, one of the most important tools in a marketer’s arsenal remains Google Analytics. This helps you monitor the performance of an online campaign in correlation to other traffic sources (such as organic, direct, email and referral) and observe the users behavior on the website or their interaction with it.
If you own an online store and you have activated the eCommerce Tracking tool, you can easily follow the development of your sales, the frequently added products, the dropout rate and the channels that generate most sales.
Mentioned above are just a few ideas that can help you measure the impact of an online campaign. However, in order to get the best results you need to fully understand your objectives, target audience and competitive advantages. Based on these factors, you can develop a communication plan and implement efficient measuring techniques.
Develop smart campaigns with beneficial results. Contact us here!