The Beginner’s Guide to Press Auditing
17/05/2021 2:09 PM
Press advertising is still a fundamental pillar of many campaigns and can be a very impactful method of reaching your customers, but do you know how to measure its effectiveness? Are you unclear on what a press audit involves, or what process is used to identify its performance? If so, let us take you through some of the basics.
What is a Press Audit?
A Press Audit benchmarks all regional and national print publications, supplements and magazines. This helps to identify how efficient a client schedule is by target audience and region. Our audit will then advise on the best strategy to optimise your campaigns potential.
The media audit is a vital tool not just for our marketing but also our wider business, and is balanced with commercial performance. The audit work gives us complete transparency about the decisions made and aids the company to increase return on investment. This is much more than a standard audit – it’s part of a full consultative process, based around a demanding set of checks & balances.
What Does a Press Audit Involve?
A Press audit involves a detailed analysis of the key components of your press campaign in order to build up a picture of performance.
The press analysis is based around positioning and cost, with weightings to each assigned based on discussions with the media agent and advertiser. Results can be measured through actual positioning, versus competitor analysis or against a specific benchmark. Price targets can be identified and key titles can be monitored with their own specific set of criteria.
For a quick overview download our 10 Step Guide For Press Media Plans which contains key measurement criteria for successful press advertising campaigns.
The insights from 23 Media Audits have helped us to implement a set of pricing and quality processes across the press planning covering key metrics for all our print and digital titles. As our buying is carried out in house the level of expertise from 23 Media Audits fills in the gaps we might otherwise have when benchmarking our press performance
Did you know?
How Do You Measure the Success of Press Advertising?
KPI Setting
Setting clear KPI’s is an essential element of ensuring an effective press campaign and audit process.
Coupons & Special Offers
These are an obvious and direct way of not only driving customers to your business but also acting as a useful guide to measuring the effectiveness of your press campaigns.
Unique Landing Pages
Aligning your press campaign to a unique page on your website can be an excellent method of tracking the success of your advertising, and using different landing pages for each ad can be a good yardstick for A/B testing.
How Did You Hear About Us?
The first port of call for new customers is usually the company website so finding out what drove them there through a drop down survey question can assist in measuring the success of your press campaigns versus other media channels.
Monitor Your Sales
See whether your sales increased for the period of your press campaign against benchmarks. However it is important not to look at this in isolation. If sales did not increase but customer enquiries/website traffic did spike, then the advert may still be effective but customers may not be finding what they require when engaging with your business.
Return on Ad Spend
The ultimate measurement of campaign effectiveness is analysing sales uplift in the sense of your advertising spend.
Did you know?
Including press advertising in a campaign can, on average, deliver an ROI 3 times higher than that of campaigns not featuring any print adverts.
What Can Our Press Audit Deliver?
A press audit by 23 Media Audits concentrates on three key areas to review your print advertising and help shape any future campaigns:
1.
Campaign Performance
Assists advertisers in understanding their campaign impact, allowing them to identify immediate performance improvements and where to prioritise resources.
2.
Digital & Traditional Press Evaluation
Delivers an evaluation of digital and traditional press abilities, helping advertisers to build a picture of where the risks exist in their current press media strategy.
3.
Implement Best Practice
Provides advertisers with a best-practice evaluation, pin-pointing which key areas lead to strong press performance and what publications deliver the maximum media value.
For further insight Download Our Press Audit Guide which contains a more in depth look at all press auditing parameters and includes example charts and dashboards.