When it comes to effective advertising, marketers and companies’ owners are always concerned about its effectiveness. And it’s natural, as nobody wants to waste their money and efforts. Thus, more and more businesses, including medium and small companies are reverting to advertising research in order to boost their chances of conquering the attention and wallets of potential customers. When doing such type of research, they want to answer two main questions: whether the KPIs of the campaign were reached and how the content is perceived by the target audience. These questions are relevant at both stages: pre-campaign and post-campaign. Nevertheless, finding answers can be challenging. In order to facilitate this task for you, we came up with 4 pieces of advice you have to consider when doing an advertising research.

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Use surveys

Don’t neglect surveys, as they are a reliable source of constructive feedback, which is hard to distill from comments on the company’s social media accounts or a website. Take your time to properly design the questionnaire in order to ask precise questions and collect relevant data. Use more questions with restricted answers and less open-ended ones in order to streamline the focus and thinking of respondents on KPI-related aspects of your advertising campaign.

Compare what people say with what they really think

Surveys are good, but still, have limitations. The main one is that survey answers contain only the information which respondents want to share, while real attitudes and emotions stay somewhere behind the curtain of the conscious mind. That’s where neuromarketing tools step in. Eye-tracking, emotion measurement, and implicit tests allow to track, register and analyze unconscious reactions of the human brain to the tested object. These tools are an indispensable source of information. For instance, at the pre-launch stage, you can test the draft campaign materials in order to be able to adjust it according to the consumers’ preferences and boost the campaign’s efficiency. After the launch of the campaign, these tools can be effectively used to measure the involvement and coverage of the target audience as well as analyze emotional bonds they formed with the product.

Segment your target audience

If you have enough time for conducting the advertising research, segment your target audience into a different group of respondents. Preferences of the target audience may significantly differ depending on age, sex, family status, job, etc. Segmenting of the target audience gives the possibility to conduct a thorough assessment of the preferences of every group and thus adjust advertising materials accordingly. Furthermore, it will help you identify communication channels that shall be used to achieve the optimal coverage of every target group. Segmenting also allows you to differentiate between various emotions which should be targeted in your ad. For instance, when advertising a new car and trying to target young mothers you would rather put emphasis on safety features. At the same, while promoting the same car for millennials you would rather concentrate on the interface of the media system as well as its connectivity with different external devices. 

Do a keyword research

It’s impossible to imagine a contemporary advertising campaign without a digital component, as more and more consumers are getting inclined to purchase online. The competition in digital advertising is fierce and marketers have numerous tools and platforms for the creation, publishing, and promotion of their content. Since numerous companies already advertise similar products online, it’s very useful to conduct keyword research in order to see which phrases and words consumers use to find products that are similar to yours. Such research will help you better optimize the text content of your ad campaign, as well as make it more “visible and attractive” for search engines.   

Advertising research is a complex process that requires a lot of effort, time and resources in order to make the final product efficient and relevant. We hope that by using the aforementioned tips you can substantially decrease your expenses and research time while still getting high-quality, comprehensive consumer insights.