HOW SUCCESSFUL WAS MY LAST AD CAMPAIGN?

maximum bang for your buck. In order to track responses to our adverts, we included a “Book Now” button. From the get-go, the results were incredible. Every event we advertised enjoyed increased pre-booking, and more people turned up on the day as well. The moral of this story is not that you should immediately start advertising on

Facebook; in this particular case, that just happened to be the best channel to reach our audience with the limited funds available. The lesson to be learned is that every advert needs a clear objective that can be measured. Otherwise, how will you know if it’s had any impact?

Like many people in our industry, I turned my hobby into a job. As a result, I find my work stimulating, and most of the people I deal with have a shared interest. The only problem is that it’s difficult to switch off because my hobby is now an extension of my work.

To give myself a break, in my spare time, I’m a station master on a heritage railway. Our railway is entirely staffed by volunteers and the trustees were very excited when they discovered I run a marketing company. Could I help with their marketing? This put me in an awkward situation – I wanted to help, but I also wanted a break from my day job. As a compromise, I offered to manage their Facebook advertising.

For an organisation with limited resources, every penny spent on promotion needs to generate a significant amount of income, so it’s really important to know whether you’re getting

Coca-Cola, one of the Top 10 brands in the world, spends $4bn a year on advertising. Their campaigns tend to be based around messages – think of the “Holidays are coming” adverts they run every Christmas. You can be sure the marketing team at CocaCola will be running surveys to check whether people are associating their fizzy drink with the season of goodwill.

Of course, the ultimate objective is always to boost sales, but a shrewd advertiser understands that there are different ways and means to achieve this. Sometimes it’s something as simple as getting a customer to click on a button to buy, and other times it’s about changing people’s opinions. Either way, as we always say, if you can’t measure, you can’t manage. 

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What’s the point of having a sale?