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How to Keep Track of your ROI As Charity Ad Spend Increases

Over the last year, ad spend for charities increased as much as 6%, with double the money spent on ads for the cinema and digital realms. Market research firm Nielsen revealed an estimated ad spend by charities of £458.8m in 2015. But how much of that money was well spent, being targeted to already-successful campaigns and used to build new campaigns on that success?

Marketing research on UK charities revealed an interesting fact: that many charities are not tracking the successes and failures of their campaigns; they are simply increasing ad spend. However, the success of your ad campaigns depends on far more than the amount of money being spent; campaign success will depend on your ability to effectively track several aspects of each of your campaigns.

Making a Connection

Many organisations experience issues with relating the costs of that spend to the benefits. Many times, this is a nearly impossible task for charities because these costs are often hidden within a larger budget, and not laid out directly on the profit and loss sheet.

Over half of charities in the UK have no performance indicators in place to tell them how well their advertising is working. This is because tracking several aspects of many campaigns is an incredibly difficult endeavour with many moving parts. As well, effective ROI tracking requires the reach and impact of ads to not only be monitored, but gathered and presented.

Understanding KPIs

Key performance indicators, or KPIs, will tell you how effective all of your campaigns are doing. There are four KPIs to consider when tracking your ROI for your ad spend.

1) General KPIs like reach, leads and traffic for each campaign are important because they give an indication about what motivates ad viewers to click on each ad and travel to your organisation’s website. However, it’s not the amount of web traffic going to your specific pages that is important; it’s the visitors who actually convert to a donation that you will want to keep a close eye on.

2) Another important KPI to monitor are the different channels people are using to get to you. These channels can include traffic from search engines and social media, as well as traffic to your charity’s blog and website.

3) Source-based KPIs like pay-per-click advertising, referrals and organic searches for your charity will also tell you how well your campaigns are doing.

4) Finally, campaign-specific KPIs like conversions, click-through rates and lead generation will help you measure ROI in terms of the quality of your ads.

Tracking all of these manually can be an impossible task, but technology exists in the form of CRM software for charities that allows for all of the above KPIs to be easily and simultaneously tracked.

Campaigns with a Laser Focus

With the right tracking system in place, your organisation can have the data it needs to see which campaigns are thriving and where improvements could stand to be made. As well, CRM software can accomplish something considered by many charities to be incredibly difficult to accomplish: the assignment of marketing spend to specific target audiences.

Any quality CRM will provide you with a 360° view of every campaign, as well as a complete picture of where your campaigns have been, where they are now and where they’re going. Effective campaigns can receive additional funding, whilst those that are falling behind can get the attention they need to thrive.