It’s a misnomer that a successful podcast or streaming audio brand lift study is one that shows actual lifts in your top brand metrics. Instead, a successful brand lift study is one that tells you why your ad campaign worked, or why it didn’t. But an even more successful study unpacks all the factors that made an impact, taking you from a simple black and white, binary picture to a rich technicolor perspective.
There are a myriad of reasons you might not be getting enough brand lift insight, but here are 5 of the most common and what to watch for.
1. You Don’t Have Enough Sample
“Sample” means the number of respondents who have completed the brand lift survey. We use this word because we’re literally surveying a sample of the people who represent your campaign’s audience. In order to draw reliable conclusions about a campaign’s performance we need to be sure we’ve surveyed enough people.
One problem with small sample sizes is that it only takes a few respondents to really change outcomes. Let’s say that you survey 50 people, and 54% say they’re aware of your brand – a majority. You’d probably be less happy if that result were a minority, like 44%. However the difference between these two results is just five people – 10% of the sample – saying they do or do not remember your brand.
Now let’s bump up that sample to 200 people, the gap between 44% and 54% is now 20 people. Those extra people help lessen the influence of any one, two or three respondents.
Another problem with small sample sizes is that they limit your ability to break down results to examine different segments of the audience, based on factors like demographics, podcast or ad creative. That leads us into reason number two.
2. You’re Only Looking at the Overall Toplines
No doubt, it’s important to look at the overall brand lift results for a campaign. You want to gauge the combined influence of your ads to see if they drove more brand awareness, favorability or purchase intent. But if that’s all you examine, you’re missing a lot of pivotal insights.
Imagine a campaign where overall results show that 44% of respondents who heard it say they would consider purchasing your product, making for a lift of just 4 points over the control cell of respondents who weren’t exposed to the ads. That seems to indicate that the campaign had some positive impact on the lower funnel, but not as much as desired.
But then you segment the results by age demographics and a very different picture develops.
Breaking things down It turns out that 52% of A18-34 listeners said they would purchase, driving a lift of 12 points. But only 40% of the larger A35-44 segment said they would, meaning we have no lift with older listeners. This shows the campaign is actually more successful than the topline results would indicate, but only with a segment of the audience.
This is a valuable finding for better understanding the true impact of your campaign, particularly for optimizing the next flight. In this case, you might want to shift your target or tweak your creative to better resonate with the older audience.
The same kind of disparity can exist between channels, publishers, other demographics, or even consumer behavior. For instance, how important would it be to learn how your ads fared with your competitor’s customers?
3. You’re Not Asking Enough Questions
There’s a wide variation in brand lift studies, and some get by with just a few questions. It’s easy to see the attraction to such simplicity. If you’re primarily focused on building awareness with your campaign, then it might seem superfluous to ask about purchase intent. Or vice-versa: top-funnel metrics like awareness may seem unnecessary when you’re most concerned with mid-funnel measures, like consideration.
However, these metrics are related. Awareness is a necessary precursor for consideration, and understanding a campaign’s impact throughout the funnel lets you uncover where you might be losing people and might need to refocus.
It’s also valuable to go beyond just metrics and add categorization questions that help you better understand your audience, such as: are they currently your customers, or your competitor’s?
4. You’re Not Asking the Right Questions
You can’t know if you don’t ask, and brand lift’s superpower is that we have the opportunity to ask real listeners and viewers how your ads affect and change their perception of your brand. While it seems obvious, it can’t be repeated enough that you must ask questions that directly address your KPIs. But also, as we noted in reason #3, you’re best off covering the entire funnel so as to leave no stone unturned.
Asking listeners about their current purchasing preferences and behaviors tells you how well you’re growing your brand’s reach. If only your current customers are responding positively, then you’re just preaching to the choir. If the campaign is resonating with some of your competitor’s customers, then you’re growing your own base.
For more precise brand lift insights, include questions about messaging and brand attributes that come right from the ad creatives themselves. This gives you a direct gauge of just what messages are cutting through and moving the needle.
5. You’re Not Analyzing Creative
Looking only at brand lift results without analyzing creative is like checking the thermostat and seeing it’s too hot without looking to see if the A/C is on. While targeting, channels and placements are important variables in campaign performance, in the end the ad creatives are doing the work.
Put more directly: the ad creatives are the most important driver of your campaign performance.
Again, it’s a fundamental best practice to include questions that address the messaging. And it’s just as important to examine the creatives themselves. Are the messages clear? Or are they lost or overwhelmed by a kitchen sink approach? Is your brand mentioned, and mentioned enough?
These are just a few of the factors that should be analyzed to gain more brand lift insight. Otherwise, you could be missing what’s working, or risk making the same mistakes over and over.
Are your brand lift studies not helping you understand and optimize your campaign performance? Drop us a line and we’ll be happy to assess what you’re doing and develop a brand lift strategy that fills in those gaps.
