Today, I am honor to participate in a workshop with one of my clients, and other agency partners include MillwardBrown ACSR (from branding side), OMD (from media side), and MRM (from digital marketing side). Of course, I am on behalf of CIC (from social media side).

The topic of this workshop is to discuss how to review the success of an online digital campaign integratedly and comprehensively from different factors. I cannot disclose too many details due to business confidential and ethics. What I want share today are some key learnings and thoughts from my perspective.

First of all, what’s the objective of running a digital campaign? Some marketers would say they wanna traffic, because high traffic can probably drive high brand awareness. Some marketers would say they wanna engage with consumers, because active engagement can probably result in good brand preference. So, the final conclusion is for “branding”.

Objective is clear now, then the SUCCESS KPIs can be figured out step by step accordingly.

Step One: Review the Reach

Reach of a campaign is the most basic factor to evaluate the campaign efficiency before you looking into branding. For example, if a big campaign only reach limited consumers, do you think it is still necessary to discuss the impact on brand?

Indexes of Reach include traffic, page view, # of visitor, # of click, etc. Besides, cost per click, cost per visitor, and cost per keyword by SEO can also be considered if ROI is a key KPI of the campaign manager.

Step Two: Measure the Engagement

After reviewing the Reach, the next step is to measure the degree of engagement.

A digital campaign is not just a mini-site full of information to communicate with the consumers. It is a more interactive program to encourage consumer to participate. If a campaign attract 1 million visitors but few of them are really engaged, it cannot be recognized as a successful campaign so far.

Indexes of Engagement include timing on the site, click rate to deeper content, # of submission, etc.

Step Three: Understand of the Participation

At this stage, somebody may say that almost every index is there and (s)he has already been clear about the performance of the campaign, it seems nothing else.

Actually, what a campaign manager has due this stage are all quantitative indexes. Next step you need a more in-depth understanding of consumer insight and diagnosis. A qualitative analysis can inspire your mindset.

Social media enables this purpose. Comments within the mini-site and buzz outside the mini-site are the best verbatim for the campaign manager to know why consumers are willing or not willing to participate into the campaign; to know which activities/functions attract them most; to know who are the most active and/or influential people throughout the campaign; and to know where are the most popular e-communities consumers share campaign information.

Based on some social media collecting and mining technologies, these terms (buzz volume. buzz sentiment, buzz content, buzz elfuencer, buzz e-community) can be quantified in certain degree.

Consumers will help you figure out what work and what not work. Their opinions are your best take-aways.

Step Four: Evaluate the Branding

Now, you have the quantitative data about Reach and Engagement on your right hand and qualitative understanding on your left hand. Thus, let’s evaluate the Branding effectiveness finally.

Branding evaluation can be divide into three main parts: brand awareness, brand preference, and brand (purchase) consideration. Through some embedded survey on the mini-site, these terms can be measurable. For example, Millward Brown Dynamic Logic’s AdIndex is to able to test these factors.

On another hand, during step three, some qualitative findings and verbatim are also good POV of branding effectiveness.

Thus, if a campaign firstly get a significant number reach, secondly be successful in engaging consumers in a deep degree with low cost, thirdly the participation generate relevant/meaningful/influential buzz content and opinion leader, and finally the brand awareness/preference/consideration increase obviously, we can say it’s a success!