Something that has always baffled me is the importance that advertisers, especially agencies (I used to work at one), place on IMPRESSIONS when deciding to purchase advertising for their digital sales campaign.
Measuring the strength of a campaign via IMPRESSIONS (the number of times an ad is shown on a webpage or search engine), is relevant for branding campaigns when your goal is to get your ad in front of as many people as possible.
However, when your goal is to achieve sales, the number of IMPRESSIONS should not influence your buy.
So why does it?
Buyers are lured into purchasing IMPRESSIONS due to the low costs and high volume of eyeballs offered by Google and Facebook. These reports end up being the “look how good we are” measure rather than a report on real results.
Why IMPRESSIONS don’t convert to sales:
The Environment: Thousands of people may be seeing your ad but are they in the right frame-of-mind to act? Are they looking for retirement village options or are they perusing facebook for cute cat videos?
Buyers: You need sales and you need them now and we all know how long it takes from the first time a user sees your ad through to when they are ready to make a purchasing decision. This audience is important but not as important as getting in front of the “ready to act” buyers.
Find the right environment and target the buyers
villages.com.au has successfully been providing advertisers with village unit sales for the last 13 years. The site attracts over 800, 000 unique users each year – an audience that is using the directory to find their next home.
Research demonstrates that users are on the site because they have experienced a life event (financial, physical, environmental) and they require a solution now.
It really comes down to quality vs quantity - what do you want?
A good question to ask yourself (or your agency) is if you can track your ad leads through to a sale? This will give you an indication of if you’re reaching your real objectives and not just getting large numbers of wasted eyeballs seeing your ad.
If you are interested in advertising on villages.com.au you can download the media kit here and contact us for more information.
Allison