How nice it is to be able to share with an advertising client the fact that its advertising campaign with you is, in fact, driving up awareness, interest, and research about its product.

Tracking campaign performance is becoming essential to proving the value of the advertising exposure we sell.

This case study is an example that not only proves that cross-channel advertising exposure is producing customer leads, but that the customer prospects engaging with the advertising are the right type of high-quality leads desired.

Following a presentation on the results of its customer file analysis from our McClatchy Customer Data Center (MCDC) analyst, the advertising client better understood its market opportunity segments.

Larger budgets were adjusted to build a more comprehensive marketing campaign that employed multiple targeting options across tangible and digital exposure channels.

The ad campaign included tracking mechanisms that enabled us to provide performance metrics to the client. Below is an illustration from our impress Local dashboard that shows the impact on the client’s Web site traffic when various ad campaign elements were placed in the market.

The client’s Web site performance demonstrated impact (spikes) as consumers took action after being exposed to a variety of ad channels. From digital premium news network ads to newspaper inserts, then digital retargeting and a post-it ad programme, each event created an activity spike.

This chart enables the ad executive to have an important conversation about consumer behaviour with the client.

The client expected more direct phone calls immediately. The phone calls will come, but first, most consumers will do a little research on any large purchase before they pick up the phone. During the research phase, re-targeting can be a very effective means of keeping your client’s business in front of good leads as they research.

The spiking traffic on the client’s Web site demonstrates the point that consumers are doing their research on the client. That’s a good thing – hot leads!

Even more value for the advertising client is created as consumer data is captured when they do their research or make phone calls to the advertiser’s business. Our analytics system captures the address and phone number of a fairly high percentage of consumers responding to these advertising campaigns.

The sample of addresses and phone numbers in this example (above) has been covered as a matter of policy. But the point is, with an address we can geo-code, map, and append a customer type (Nielsen Prizm Code) to create a consumer profile of what those responding to the advertising look like (see below).

The life stages represented by the consumer response profile were right on target with the type of customer this business needs to attract to its products.

Whether young, a family, or more mature, the majority of consumers responding to the advertising were affluent.

Now the ad executive has some very powerful data for conversations with his advertising client.

Some of the take-aways are as follows.

There is proof that:

• Consumer research in the path-to-purchase can be triggered by advertising.
  
  
• Various advertising channels can work together to drive impact down that path-to-purchase.
  
  
• Possessing such information enables the ad executive to heavily consult with his client, and that includes sometimes reviewing how the client defines “success.” This means phone calls as a lone metric is not the entire story. The Web traffic from this example proves that.

It’s about understanding how all of your marketing channels are working together and evaluating how they perform against your client’s goals. Being able to show an advertiser what kind of customer is responding to advertising is extremely powerful.

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