Analyst Speak: Weigh campaign sites' impact on the brand before abandoning them
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Christina Goodman, director of marketing and business development, Dynamic Logic
The end destination of many marketing campaigns is a dedicated website. TV ads encourage people to visit them and online ads link to them. Once there, users can participate in contests, register for sweepstakes, watch videos, play games, find out more information or buy products. This offers brands a unique way to engage and interact with potential buyers. However, most people don’t click through to them. So, if only a few people visit a campaign site, is it worth the extra cost?
Dynamic Logic evaluated the effectiveness of branded campaign sites for more than 182 global studies. This normative data shows that the sites have a substantial impact on consumers’ perceptions of a brand. Moreover, visiting a campaign site leads to significant increases in brand metrics. For the persuasion metrics, on average, visits to the sites increase brand favourability by 3.4 percentage points and intent to purchase increases by 3.1 points (compared with 1.3 and 1.1 percentage points increases for exposure to display ads respectively).
To evaluate the effect campaign sites have on brand perceptions, we randomly surveyed visitors to the sites. Those who take the survey before entering the site are used as a control group, while another statistically similar group completes surveys when leaving the sites. On average, 7.8% of people become aware of a campaign’s message who otherwise wouldn’t have been after visiting the site.
Looking further at percent-impacted scores, campaign sites appear to generate increases nearly double those typically seen for online display and video ads combined. For brand awareness, online ads generate an average increase of 2.1 percentage points, compared to 4.1 percentage points for campaign site visits.
This may be a result of the sites’ audience, which usually has a greater pre-existing familiarity of and affinity towards the brand and may respond more strongly to its messaging. However, it’s more likely related to the experience people have on the campaign site, which is much more immersive, interactive and engaging than being shown a display ad while browsing.
Effective campaign sites require an investment towards production of the site and media for traffic drivers. Yet they also attract a particularly relevant audience, so sometimes quality may outweigh quantity. Campaign sites appear to generate a more impactful brand experience than display or video ads, but efficiency should be examined when talking about their return on investment.
Readers' comments (2)
Jonas | Thu, 29 Jul 2010 9:11 pm
Hm. Lets see if I understand the numbers. - 11,2% who visited a campaign site understood which brand they were exposed to? Isn´t that quite bad? 90% who visited the campaign site didn´t noticed where they were?
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Christina | Mon, 2 Aug 2010 3:51 pm
11.2% represents the delta (or percentage point increase) in the difference between the control and exposed group, so it doesn't necessarily mean that the inverse is true -- 90% did not recognise the brand. From our research, we know that baseline control percentages are usually quite high for visitors to the microsite, so trying to move the needle to get a larger percentage of people aware of a brand is difficult. Some microsites are well-branded whilst others may not be, so it can mean that communicating brand awareness isn't as easy, or as obvious, as it sounds.
What we do know is that microsites on average can do a great job at influencing people to purchase or try the product and on average, visitors to these sites also are more likely to feel favourably towards the brand as a result.
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