The Top 7 KPI’s to measure digital advertising
Tracking key performance indicators (more commonly known as KPI’s) is key to measuring the success of your latest digital advertising campaign, whether that be advertising your annual Christmas event, the 6 week Summer Holiday campaign or your brand-new Scare Maze ahead of Halloween.
At Agility Marketing, we have 7 top KPI’s we use to analyse performance of our digital advertising campaigns, which we feel allows us to monitor the success of the marketing strategy.
These are:
- Clicks
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- Conversions (number of ticket sales)
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
- Cost Per Mille (CPM) – Cost Per Thousand Impressions
- Engagement Rate
These indicators provide us with the knowledge to track trends and build a robust marketing campaign based on data driven decisions. After all, evaluating what works effectively through the eye of the consumer is vital.
Measuring the success of your digital advertising campaign also helps ensure you are getting a return on your investment. Some of these benchmarks also provide important information to compare and contrast all the visitor attraction campaigns we run. It allows us to know what “good” and “excellent” look like.
Recording conversions – an ongoing iOS dilemma
Most campaigns we ran want the clear objective of ticket sales and this directs us to set this as the primary metric within the platforms.
Recording all conversions is, unfortunately, not possible due to the iOS privacy update, but you can still track some conversions to give you an idea of what is working well and want isn’t.
This makes the metrics from the other key performance indicators even more important to provide a rounded view of how the campaign is performing. They provide the bigger picture on which parts you can improve.
Let us explain our top KPI’s in a bit more detail…
1. Clicks
Clicks are used to measure the number of times that users click on your ad and directs them to your website.
Clicks assist with understanding how well your digital ad is appealing to the audience, ultimately making them click on it.
Ads that are highly targeted are more likely to receive a higher number of clicks, as they are tailored specifically to a certain type of audience. We find clicks an important metric as it determines whether the ad is effectively engaging or not; helping us adapt strategy in the future.
It is important to know what the individual platforms call an outbound click to your website. On Meta it is called ‘outbound clicks’, where as within Google it is referred to as clicks and on Tik Tok, clicks (destination).
2. Click Through Rate (CTR)
The click through rate is worked out through a simple equation:
Number of times ad is clicked divided by number of times ad is shown (impressions), as a percentage
Measuring click through rate is vital for comparing the performance of the different channels of advertising you are using for your attraction.
Click through rate is an important tool as it helps you to understand your customers, and the best ways to reach your target audience. For instance, a low CTR might suggest that you’re not effectively reaching your intended audience or that your persuasive messaging isn’t resonating with them.
This metric is perfect for benchmarking across clients as it isn’t related to your attraction’s digital advertising budget. Comparing and contrasting results across attractions enables us to drive better results.
3. Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost Per Click (CPC) refers to the price charged for each individual click made on your ad. CPC is easy to calculate:
Total cost of campaign divided by number of clicks during that campaign
In an ideal world, your CPC would be as low as possible. The ad platforms will try and get you as many clicks as it can within your budget if you choose to optimise your campaign for clicks. This means it will show the ad to people who have a higher propensity of clicking on ads. At Agility, we tend to optimise for conversions for our engaged audiences and click from our prospecting audiences, but it depends on what we are trying to achieve.
Irrelevant of the optimisation, however CPC is one of the most important metrics and a huge role to play in your campaign’s profitability!
4. Conversions (AKA. Ticket Sales)
A conversion is a valuable recorded action when someone interacts with your ad and acts on it. Conversions for most of our visitor attraction clients refers to number of ticket purchases, but can also refer to downloads and sign ups or any other action you feel is of value to your business.
Conversions let you see how many times a specific action was completed due to ad exposure. They are important as they are most likely to be the goal for your campaigns.
Since the privacy update, however, the number of trackable conversions is lower than you actually obtain. It does allow you to track the trends across the platforms.
5. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition, also known as cost per conversion measures the cost of a customer taking an action that leads to a conversion. CPA is easy to calculate:
Total cost of campaign divided by number of conversions during that campaign
CPA is an important marketing metric as it gives you an estimate of how much your new customers are costing you, therefore allowing you to determine whether your strategy of getting the conversion needs to be revised or not.
CPA is chosen over other marketing metrics as it is a cost where you are paying for a direct result, due to the result of a conversion. You can also compare performance across channels when you are running ad campaigns across different platforms to see how your Farm Park, Zoo, Theme Park or Scream Park’s results compare.
6. Cost Per Mille (CPM)
CPM stands for cost per Mille, which is otherwise known as cost per thousand, and states the cost you will pay per 1,000 impressions on your post.
This KPI is an effective tool for comparing the effectiveness of various media channels.
CPM easily explains how much ad space will cost and makes the most sense for a campaign focused on heightening brand awareness or delivering a specific message. It is determined by the platform based on the demand of the advertising space at the time you are placing your ads.
It will impact on cost per click and cost per conversion.
7. Engagement
Last but not least! Engagement refers to any action taken by a user who interacts with the content you have posted. This can be in the form of clicks, reactions, comments, shares, saves, or 95% video views. Engagement can be measured by individual ad, or for your profile.
Measuring engagement is important as it gives you insight into how well your content is resonating with your audience, allowing you to optimise posts in the future to improve your communication of your visitor attraction.
Although it doesn’t necessarily translate to sales, engagement is important as it shows that people are enjoying the content you are posting, and becoming aware of your brand, potentially sharing with others to result in a ticket sale.
This blog was written by Liz Dimes, Digital Marketing Director of Agility Marketing | Blog updated on 23/07/2024
