As a business owner, you are always looking for new ways to reach your target market and get your product or service in front of them. Outdoor advertising, such as billboards, is one effective way to do that. In building your billboard strategy, you want to ensure that your marketing dollars are well-spent. After all, there’s no point in shelling out big bucks for a billboard campaign if it isn’t going to result in more customers or sales.
But how do you know if your billboard campaign is actually reaching people and driving sales? The answer lies in being able to analyze your marketing data.
Why Marketing Data Analysis is Essential
Data analysis is important for any marketing campaign, but it is especially important for channels like billboards where you are trying to reach a large number of people in a specific geographic area.
As you analyze your marketing data, you can see which sites your billboard campaign is reaching the most people and whether or not those people are taking action (such as visiting your website or making a purchase).
Moreover, you can adjust your marketing strategy by understanding what works and what doesn’t.
What to Consider When Launching Marketing Campaigns
There are a few things you need to keep in mind when analyzing marketing data, particularly from outdoor/digital outdoor billboard campaigns.
First, you need to determine your marketing goals.
What are you trying to achieve with your billboard campaign?
Are you looking to enhance brand recognition?
Drive traffic to your website or brick-and-mortar store?
Once you know your objectives, you can begin to gather data that will help you determine whether or not your campaign is successful.
After understanding your aspirations, it’s important to define your target audience.
Who do you want to make an impression with on your billboard campaign?
Once you know who your target audience is, you can begin to gather data that will help you determine whether or not they’re seeing your billboards and, more importantly, whether or not they’re taking action as a result of seeing them.
How to Evaluate the Success of Your Marketing Campaigns
When most people think of billboards, they think of huge signs advertising products or services along highways.
However, billboards can be placed in various locations, including near high-traffic areas, public transit stops, or even in front of businesses.
No matter where you place your billboards, you want to ensure that they effectively drive sales and generate customer leads by measuring a few key indicators of success (KPIs – Key Performance Indicators).
Sales Revenue
One of the most important metrics to track when evaluating the success of your billboard campaign is sales revenue.
To evaluate this metric, you can compare your total sales during the period when your billboard was active to your total sales from the same period the previous year.
If you see an increase in sales after launching your billboard campaign, that’s a good sign that your investment is paying off.
If you don’t see an increase, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your campaign was a failure; there could be other factors at play, such as changes in the overall economy or seasonality. Nonetheless, tracking sales revenue is a relatively straightforward way to get a rough idea of whether or not your billboard campaign has the desired effect.
ROI With Advertising Spend
Of course, no matter how well a marketing campaign performs in terms of metrics like social media engagement or web traffic, it won’t be worth it if it doesn’t generate a positive Return On Investment (ROI).
To calculate ROI for a billboard campaign (or any other advertising spend), divide the revenue generated by the billboard campaign by its total cost. The higher the ROI for a given advertising spend, the more successful the campaign is considered to be.
Incremental Website Traffic
In addition to looking at social media engagement and CPC, another metric you can use to evaluate the success of a digital billboard campaign is traffic—specifically, web traffic.
To track this metric, you can look at how many visitors came to your website from clicking on one of your ads during the period when they were active. If you see an incremental increase in web traffic (usually through “Direct” traffic in Google Analytics) after launching a digital billboard campaign, that’s a promising sign people are interested in what you’re offering and are taking action by visiting your website — an early step in their customer journey.
Social Media Engagement and Impressions
Another metric you can use to evaluate the success of your billboard campaign is social media engagement.
One way to track this metric is to look at the number of mentions or shares your brand received on social media when your billboard was active. You can also look at the “sentiment” of these mentions and see if they were generally positive or negative. If you see an uptick in social media activity and content impressions after launching your billboard campaign, that’s a good sign that people are thinking and talking about your brand.
Customer Retention
Last but not least, don’t forget to evaluate customer retention rates following your billboard marketing campaign.
If you acquired new customers through your billboard or outdoor marketing efforts, are they sticking around? Or did they make a one-time purchase and never come back? Customer retention rates can give you valuable insights into your campaign’s overall success and sales strategy.
How bMedia Can Help Analyze Marketing Analytics
Billboards are a notable way to reach potential customers. However, designing a successful billboard campaign can be difficult.
bMedia can help you with your billboard marketing strategy by providing best-in-class analytics and expert advice from our team of marketing strategists. We analyze marketing and advertising data and develop a strategy according to those insights.
There are a few key ways in which we can help propel your marketing strategy forward, including:
Expanded Reach
Our billboards provide 24/7 exposure, reaching over 90% of the Puerto Rican population.
That means that no matter what time of day or night, your billboard will be seen by the vast majority of people on the island.
State-of-the-Art Technology
Our team also uses cutting-edge vehicle analytics to gather data on cars passing by billboards. This data is then used to calculate your CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and ROI (return on investment). In other words, you’ll know exactly how effective your billboard campaign is in real time.
Access to Expert Professionals
We also give you access to working hand in hand with marketing strategists to help seamlessly craft your billboard strategy. Not only will you have access to insightful analytics, but you’ll also have a team of experts working behind the scenes to make sure that your campaigns are as successful as possible.
Why You Should Invest in the Right Marketing Data for Your Billboards
Being able to analyze marketing data is important for business owners who want to ensure their marketing campaigns are influential.
For outdoor advertising campaigns like billboards, data analysis can help you understand which areas are being reached and whether or not those people are taking action.
There are a few different ways to collect and analyze data, but one of the most important things to remember is to plan what you want to do with the data before you start collecting it. Otherwise, making sense of all the information you gather will be an uphill battle. By taking the time to understand your objectives, target audience, and budget, you can ensure that your billboard marketing campaign is successful and that you’re reaching the right people with your messaging.
Our team at bMedia can help you streamline your marketing billboard analytics without the headache. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you with your billboard marketing goals!