How to measure conversions out of digital branding campaigns?

I was with a prestigious fast-food chain's MD yesterday discussing about his branding strategy.

The brief was to show the ad to maximum number of people from branding & awareness perspective.. i naturally took the video marketing, google display & programmatic display plans for him as these mediums will give him maximum visibility & brand recall.

While the discussion was going on smooth, someone from his team asked me how will we calculate the sales through these channels???!

Here is a catch.. if you are spending X, doesn't mean you will get 4X return immediately all the times..

Here comes the strategy into picture, which begins with the OBJECTIVE OF THE CAMPAIGN!

One must define the campaign objective first, before kicking off with any paid piece. If the primary objective of the campaign is visibility & reach, it should not count on the CPL but impressions.

Then client asked me what if the ad is missed or ignored by the viewer?

3 things-

1. Your creative has to be strong enough to catch the attention

2. Ad should be shown to the most relevant people

3. What if it was not digital but an hoarding on the road.. people do ignore that too.

We can not eliminate the ignorance but we can minimize this with creative efforts.

I summarised my meeting saying, if it's a lead gen campaign, do check for CPL & sales.. but if it's a branding/ awareness campaign, look for the visibility you are getting i.e. impressions

The only way to find out ROI of the branding campaign is, to observe the rise in overall sale during the particular period of campaign & a little ahead of that.

Mixing the two objectives in a single campaign, will neither make you FAST nor help you sell your FOOD! :)

He was convinced!