We Spent A Bunch of Money On Ads, And We Don’t Know What We Got Out Of It

From the Video Above: Understanding Where Your Ad Spend is Going

As companies, we invest vast amounts of time, energy and money into our ad spends, typically with one main goal in mind. 

Create a perfect ad campaign that generates leads, fills the funnel and results in sales after sales. 

This is the ideal but sadly it doesn’t always work like this. 

Often times when we look back, we find that we committed a substantial amount of money to our ad spend but it failed to yield the results we wanted.

Why?

Asking the Right Questions

This is an important question that many companies find themselves unable to answer. 

It’s a common issue. The breakdown between the money being spent and the money coming back in. 

This can often be attributed to the fact that vital functions within a company are separated into several different departments, like marketing and sales. 

While these departments should work hand and hand, there are often different reporting systems and strained communication flows. Important data and statistics may be stored separately or managed by different departments instead of working in tandem.

Sure, there may be weekly meetings to review results but much of it is siloed by department. 

A disconnect occurs because there isn’t a global, overall dashboard that encompasses all data simultaneously in one centralized system.

Assessing the Issues

Lacking a big picture approach can be detrimental. We often bag the whole campaign instead of looking at which individual component may need a little tweaking. 

That’s why it’s vital to look at every element to see what is working and what may not be. Marketing spends need to be combined with sales metrics to see exactly where the breakdown may be occurring.

We’ve created a process that helps you set up a funnel that tracks what happens to every dollar spent along each point in the funnel. We delve deep to look at everything because it’s not just about the end result of sales. Each step in the process is important whether it be the number of opt-ins, downloads, leads, and booked appointments. It’s also imperative to know if the trackable activities are a result of your ad spend or if they happened organically. 

The success of an ad campaign typically doesn’t happen overnight. 

Time is an essential element that is overlooked and often escapes the process. Success must be tracked over time and elements often have to be tweaked along the way. A/B tests may even have to occur to determine what is working best. What works best at one time may not work a few months later and may fall stagnant. 

Then, what works for one target group may not work the next time. It’s important to remember that patience is a vital element and important part of the process.

Starting the Process

Once you start to see any kind of result, good or bad, tracking is key. 

Here are some important questions to ask and analyze along the way:   

While the answers to these questions will open the doors to maximizing your ad spend, there has to be an infrastructure in place to effectively act upon them. If the infrastructure is not there or there is not a buy-in from all departments and management, then you are not maximizing every dollar spent and you may never know where your money is going. It doesn’t need to be a complicated or extravagant process, but it does need to exist. This is where we often shut down, become overwhelmed and fail to even begin. 

At LinkedSelling, we do the hard part for you so that you can focus on what needs to be done next. We not only provide a high-level overview, but we also drill down to the granular level, so you know what’s working and what isn’t. We help paint the picture and provide the vision to build the foundation and establish the infrastructure that is needed. Our approach allows everyone to weigh in and become a part of the process.