By Bob West
Every month we run the metrics on and evaluate the performance of more than 100 enewsletter and online ads. The resulting analysis is sent to each client so they understand exactly how their ad performed and they have some suggestions for improving the performance, if necessary.
However, we know that simply getting the initial ad produced challenges many companies, and too few can invest the time in producing multiple versions of an ad or adjusting it throughout the campaign to maximize the click-through rate. That is why we wanted to share this case study that illustrates:
- The importance of buying the right ad unit to meet your goals;
- The value of adapting your ad mid-campaign; and
- The engagement that can be created through effective content marketing.
This client has been a regular advertiser in our fruit and vegetable markets for the past few years. In addition to contracting with us to produce and send a custom enewsletter to our email subscribers for them, they supplemented that effort with ads on GrowingProduce.com and in the American Fruit Grower enewsletter, the American Vegetable Grower enewsletter and the Florida Grower enewsletter. They developed an aggressive schedule with multiple medium rectangle ads running monthly in each enewsletter as well as on the website.
The campaign’s goal was to drive growers to their new, highly educational website, but the client was disappointed in the click-through activity on the ads. Growers were not clicking-through and seeing all of the content on the website.
We recommended they switch their enewsletter buy from the display-oriented medium rectangle ads to the more textual logo/text ads, which consistently generate the highest click-through rate for our enewsletter ads and align better with type of information the client wanted the audience to see. Then we produced eight logo/text ads for them with the goal of maximizing click-through activity.
We wrote two general ads that apply equally to production of any fruit or vegetable crop, and then we wrote six more ads — two specific to fruit production, two for vegetable production and two for citrust production. The ads were scheduled to provide a mix of consistency and variety, which maximizes click-through rate.
Here are the metrics from the first nine insertions of the new ads:
|
# of 2013 Â insertions |
Total # of  clicks |
Avg. click-through  rate |
|
| Medium rectangle ads |
43 |
211 |
0.24% |
| Logo/text ads |
9 |
601 |
2.84% |
The nine logo/text ads generated nearly three times as many clicks as did the 43 medium rectangle ads! Now, that’s not to say that medium rectangle ads cannot work — that’s not true at all. They simply were not the right ad to meet this client’s objective, especially when they were not being updated at all.
So, what does this all mean for you as an advertiser?
- Be sure you select the right ad unit to meet your advertising objectives. (If your primary goal is to maximize the number of people clicking through to your website, the logo/text ad is the best enewsletter option.)
- Growers want to learn, and they don’t care if the information comes from our editors or you, our advertisers. Populate your website with quality content and then let growers know about it, and you can create engagement.
The author is the Director of Interactive Sales for Meister Media, and he would be happy to evaluate your current digital ads and offer suggestions for improving their performance. He can be reached at 440-602-9192 or [email protected].