Measuring and optimizing a campaign’s success doesn’t have to be a painful process. Here are three of the most important things to keep in mind in order to help improve measurement and boost your online campaign’s return on investment:
• Track sales data: Tactics that drive traffic to a client’s site are great, but is that traffic converting? Always tie traffic back to measurable results. Employ a promotion code or similar method to measure the traffic that each effort drives to the Web site and track it as it proceeds through the conversion funnel. Each creative version and traffic source should have its own promotion code;
• Measure attitude/perception shift: Objectively measure how your campaign is changing attitudes or building awareness. Surveys remain an effective tool to measure the impact and value of PR efforts. Customer feedback—calls, letters, e-mails and online posts—isn’t as measurable, but it’s integral to understanding how your messages are being received; and,
• Keep attribution in mind: Google is getting much more credit than it deserves for your work. Always work to measure how a PR campaign is affecting downstream user behavior and get credit for the real impact of your work. This can often be a challenge, but it’s a critical piece of the measurement puzzle.