One of the phrases most often heard in advertising is “print is dead.” However, that’s not the case. Print ads are a valuable way to catch your audience’s eye by creating eye-catching artwork combined with strong copy. 

But in this digital age with everything web-based, can you still use print advertising to your advantage? 

To help answer this question, we’ll explain how you can use print advertising KPIs to measure your campaign’s success and gain valuable insights into your audience. 

KPIs You Can Use For Your Print Marketing Campaign

First, before you decide what KPIs to track, you need to determine what the goal of your campaign is. Your KPIs provide the measurable data you need to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. You can’t know what to track if you don’t figure out what outcome you want to achieve. Some different goals you can have are:

• Brand Awareness
• Lead Generation
• Sales
• Brand Consideration
• Website Traffic

Once you’ve determined your goals, then it’s time to assess which KPIs support them. Below we’ll explore common ones that are useful for measuring print campaigns.

Reach

When you decide to publish your print ad, you want to make sure the publication you’re using has a large enough circulation so you can reach as many people as possible. Another tip is to see where your ad is placed. 

Front, back, and inside covers are ideal placements as well as being located on a right-hand page. Or if you’re using brochures or rack cards as your advertising methods, you want to leave brochures in a high-traffic area where people are more likely to find and pick them up. 

Frequency

Frequency is the number of times a person is exposed to an ad or how many times the ad is repeated in a specific medium over a period of time. It’s often paired with reach since they are complementary. When you place a print ad, you want to know how many people (reach) are going to see your ad and how many times (frequency) they’ll see it. 

Cost Per Result

A print ad is a good investment when it works. Once you know what your reach and frequency are, you can do some basic math to find a rough cost per result. To do this, you take the cost of the campaign divided by the result, whether that is views, leads, or site visits. Your result depends on your campaign goal. This will give you an idea of whether the ad will be profitable or if it will just cost you money in the long run. 

Brand Recall

As a business, you want people to remember your brand when prompted. For example, if you own an Italian restaurant, you want someone to remember you when asked “Who has the best meatballs in the area?”.  

Engagement

Tracking engagement shows how many people interacted with your ad. By using tactics like QR codes or specific coupon codes, more on that below, you can see how many people were directed to your site from your print ad. 

Response & Conversion Rate

Another figure to track along with your engagement rate, is your conversion rate. This shows how many people completed their journey through the funnel and became customers based on your ad. You can track this figure using tactics like special forms for landing pages or specific phone numbers with call tracking on them. 

Ways To Track Your Print Advertising

Once you’ve decided on your goal and what KPIs to track, it’s time to select the correct tactic for your campaign. You need to think about what works best for your business. If it’s more call-based, a QR code might not work as well as phone calls. 

Special Phone Numbers

Another method to track where your leads are coming from is using a special phone number or vanity phone number in your print marketing. Everyone has heard the J.J. Wentworth commercials telling people to call “877-Cash-Now!” (Bonus points if you just sang that). That’s a vanity phone number—it contains a phrase that’s specific to your business and catches people’s attention.

Now if that doesn’t fit with your business style, you can create occasion-specific phone numbers through services like:

• CallRail
• Grasshopper
• Google Voice

These companies allow you to create several temporary numbers you can use in your advertising. In particular, CallRail has phone call tracking, so you know where your leads are coming from and if your advert was successful.

QR Codes

Quick response (QR) codes are an easy way to access a website without typing a URL. They’ve become popular again in recent years since more public places have gone touch-free. 

Customers can scan a QR code in print ads using their phone’s camera to reach a specific landing page. When you create this page you’ll want to add a “noindex” tag, meaning that it won’t appear in search engine results. So the only way you can access the page is by the QR code. This gives you an accurate way to measure the effectiveness of your campaign material. 

Another way to attribute traffic from your campaign’s QR code is to direct traffic to a specific page via a URL that has UTM parameters applied to it. The five UTM parameters are source, medium, campaign, term, and content. The first three are required for tracking in Google Analytics and the last two are optional. 

Here’s an example of a URL from a campaign Strasburg Rail Road ran in June 2024 for their event “A Great Train Robbery: The Bonnie & Clyde Experience”

You can see the source (where they are running their campaign) is Penn Live, the medium is referral, which indicates what type of channel it is (referral from an ad, paid social, organic social, or cost-per-click ads). Finally, the campaign name is bonnie_clyde_june_2024.

Another benefit of using QR codes in print ads is that they generally do not expire. Once created, they can be used indefinitely unless the linked information is changed or removed.

Custom Landing Page Links

Custom landing pages are another tactic you can use in your print ads. For example, if you’re offering a free quote for work you offer, you can set up a landing page with a contact form.

Then you’ll want to add a “noindex” tag so this special landing page isn’t visible in search engines. You’ll also want to make sure it’s not added to your site navigation. That way no one can see the page unless they have the link you shared in your print ad. Doing this makes it easier to isolate traffic and only track activity from your print ad.

When it comes to creating a URL for this custom landing page, make sure you don’t create something that’s too long. You want to keep it short and easy so it looks good in the ad and is easy for users to input into their browser.

If you use Google Analytics for tracking, make sure to set up the custom landing page with a tag for the ad source (like a magazine name or brochure) so you can track your print campaign easily. This will also allow you to analyze it in GA4 alongside your other traffic sources.

Branded Hastags

A tactic that can increase your brand awareness is hashtags. Creating a branded hashtag can be an effective way to promote your business and drive conversations and can be as simple as using your company name or tagline in the hashtag. 

Hashtags can help you categorize your content so it becomes easily searchable. Including them in your ads allows you to join ongoing conversations on social media and allows your ads to be visible in those conversations.

This can lead to greater engagement, boosting your brand’s social media engagement through likes, shares, comments, and new followers.

A great example of a hashtag is Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke. Launched in Australia first, Coke removed the traditional Coke logo, replacing “Coca-Cola” from one side of a bottle with the phrase “Share a Coke with” followed by a person’s name. The goal was to find the personalized bottles and share them with friends. The hashtag was found on billboards and print ads as well. 

Specific Coupon Codes

Another method is to create specific codes for ads to entice people to visit your website and become customers. These codes can include the publication or ad name so you can easily track sales that result from them. 

An example of this could be if you owned a company and printed an ad in Clipper Magazine you could tell people to use code “CLIPPERMay2024” to get free shipping on your order or for a half price on a specific item. Or if you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can have someone bring in the ad, which acts as a valid in-store-only coupon. 

These codes can be customized to whatever objective you have for your campaign and you can run several at the same time. Just make sure you create custom coupons that don’t overlap with similar ones. 

Marketing Software

You can set up all the landing pages and coupons but if you don’t have a system in place, you’re spending money without getting your ROI. There are several programs that can help you with this task. 

One of the more popular tools is Google Analytics, which helps you build a complete picture of your audience while connecting key insights and traffic results. It also works with other Google products like Google Optimize. Plus, it’s a free tool, which is good from a cost standpoint. Also if you already have Google Analytics, make sure you’ve updated from Universal Analytics to GA4. 

Another popular tool is Semrush, which offers website traffic analysis for not only your website but for your competitor’s site as well. This can help you adjust your marketing strategy by seeing what’s worked and what hasn’t worked for the competition.

Hotjar is a similar tool to Google Analytics and Semrush in that it tracks who visits your site. However, Hotjar tries to give you the “why” behind their behavior. It allows you to visualize and map your audience’s actions while looking at recordings of their sessions. 

There are other tools on the market so do your research and see which one will work best for your business. 

Imagine this: you’re working on a campaign and have two ad versions. Both have targeted copy, engaging headlines, and eye-catching images but both have different call to actions (CTAs). Both actions serve your objective but you’re unsure which would resonate with your audience more, so what do you do? 

This is where you can use split testing to help answer that question. After we answer what is split testing, we’ll explore how split testing works and how you can use it to your advantage in your internet marketing strategy. 

What is Split Testing?

Split testing is a method of comparing two versions of a marketing asset to see which one performs better. It diverts your traffic equally to each asset so you get an accurate sampling. This can be a disadvantage since you need an audience big enough to get accurate results and the traffic to support it. 

When you’re testing elements, it’s best practice to only change one element, such as different headlines, layouts, or copy length, while keeping the rest the same. This allows you to see what specific change performs well and which doesn’t.

What is A/B Testing?

When you do a split test, you need to use an A/B test. A/B testing is a similar tactic in that you’re seeing which element performs better. Some of the elements you can test are headlines, call to actions (CTAs), images, text copy, and landing pages/web pages.

One of the biggest differences is with A/B testing you’re not always splitting your audience exactly 50/50. When you use any type of testing, you’re seeing which elements work best with your audience. Like split testing, it’s best to limit your changes so you can isolate what elements work best.

To run a successful split test, you need to have A/B testing. But to run an A/B test, you don’t need to always have split testing.

What Can You Split Test?

One of the best features of split testing is that it isn’t limited to just one area. You can use split tests across your digital marketing tactics and use the results to create or adjust your strategy. Learning what factors you can split test can help you design a more effective experiment.

Content Marketing

Considered a long-term marketing strategy, content marketing focuses on building trust and relationships with your audience through quality, and relevant, content. It can take the form of blog writing, script writing for videos or radio ads, and webpage content.

Marketers need to have patience when using content marketing because, for example, it can take online web pages 4-6 months before they start ranking in Google search results. So to make sure your content is in a position to succeed in search engines, marketers can split test: 

• CTAs
• Text length
• Image-heavy copy vs. text-heavy copy
• Headlines
• Message intent 
• Webpage layout

Split testing reveals valuable insights into your target audience’s preferences and behaviors. This knowledge empowers you to craft content that truly speaks to their needs and desires.

Social Media Marketing

With the rise of social media usage among people, social media marketing has become a favorite tool of marketers. It’s a great way for companies to reach their target audience and drive traffic to their websites. 

Social media marketing includes posts, captions for images or videos, and targeted ads. Different elements you can test are:

• CTAs
• Text length
• Post content
• Headlines 
• Post time
• Background sounds
• Message intent
• Link destination 
• Images 

By taking your results, you can help build a social media campaign that resonates with your audience and that they engage with. 

Email Marketing

A form of direct marketing, email marketing has been around since the beginning of email. When done correctly, it can build relationships with your audience, increase brand awareness, and promote your business.

One of the toughest parts about email marketing is you need what you’re sending to stand out because people get so many emails in a day. You need to hook them immediately so they want to open your email and not automatically delete it. 

When you’re crafting your email, you can test:

• Subject lines
• Templates
• Audience segments
• Send times
• Personalization vs. general messaging
• CTAs
• Text length
• Image-heavy copy vs. text-heavy copy

Testing different elements allows you to pinpoint the variations that will get your audience to click on and open. This translates to higher engagement rates, conversions, and overall campaign success.

SEO Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing’s goal is to improve a website’s visibility in search engines, such as Google, by gaining qualified traffic. With Google users searching for information/products each day, search engines are one of the biggest traffic generators for websites. 

SEO plays a key role in improving your ranking positions since better rankings mean more traffic, which can bring more brand awareness. To improve these rankings SEO marketers use several tactics including metadata and ads. Areas they can test are:

• Keywords
• URLs
• Landing pages
• Schema markup
• Linking strategies
• Title tags/meta descriptions
• Page loading speed
• Mobile responsiveness

Split testing is a continuous process, like SEO, so by consistently testing and optimizing your website, you adapt to your audience’s preferences and maximize your long-term impact.

PPC Marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a type of online marketing where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads. Typically PPC marketing is through search engines, such as Google Ads, and marketers bid on keywords. However, PPC marketing is evolving and starting to look like paid social marketing.  

With that change, PPC ads can also include social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Elements you can test are:

• CTAs
• Headlines
• Text length
• Keywords
• Text intent
• Landing pages
• Visuals
• Dayparting
• Ad objectives

Using split testing on PPC ads helps you gain a higher return on your investment or ROI. This means you’ll be spending your marketing budget on ads that you know will work and meet your goals.

How Do You Design Effective Split Tests?

To get accurate results in your testing, you need to set up an accurate test.

1. Define Goals & Target Audience

First, you need to determine what your goals are and what you want to achieve.  Knowing that gives your test structure and a direction to go in. 

Make sure your audience is equally split or as close to an even split as you can get it. This allows you to create a fair and unbiased split test.  

2. Select What to Test

As noted above, there are many different elements that you can test. However, to get the best results, you should only test one element at a time so you need to determine what’s the most important. Is it your CTA? Or do you want to see if a longer text piece captures more attention than a shorter one?

3. Create Variations

Once you’ve decided what element to test, now you need your variations. Make sure you’re creating clear differences for your team to compare. Otherwise, your test won’t yield any useful results.

When you’re creating your variations, you can create two for an A/B test or you can create more to do an A/B/C/D, or multivariate, test. Just remember to only change that one element across all variations and keep everything else the same. 

4. Set Up the Test

Now that you’ve determined your goals and what elements to change, it’s time to design your test. First, you need to determine how long you want to run your test. It needs to be long enough that you can collect sufficient data but not too long that it starts to skew the results. It’s a best practice to run a test for two weeks but you can add more time if you aren’t seeing results.

There are several tools you can use to help you set up your test and collect data. Some of them are HotJar (free), HubSpot (free), and Optimizely (paid). Research each one and see which options would work best for what results you want to gain. 

5. Analyze Your Results

Once you get your results in, it’s time to see what happened. Did one CTA perform better than the other? Or did changing when a campaign was launched make a difference? This is where you can use your analytics to track the key metrics related to your goals. 

Once you look over all your data, then you can reexamine your marketing strategy and implement what you’ve found. 

What are the Benefits of Split Testing for Me?

The obvious answer is to see which option resonates with your audience better, which is important. However, there are a few more subtle benefits you’ll get from split testing. 

Once you find out which option is best, you’ll be able to reduce your bounce rates. For example, you test copy length and discover that your audience responds better to shorter copy with more images. Moving forward, you can tailor your copy to meet your audience’s preference.

Another related benefit to reducing your bounce rates is you can increase your engagement rate. By being able to capture your target audience from the beginning, you’ll keep them on your site longer. This increases the chance they interact with your content more, whether it’s more blogs or other landing pages on your website. 

You can also use split testing to try a new marketing strategy before you launch it. You can see what works and identify any risks. Since this is just a test, you’ll have time to make any changes to your strategy and fix any issues you find before a launch date.

Once your launch occurs, you can use the split testing results in your reporting to show why these changes are necessary and how they can benefit your business. Having data to support your reasoning strengthens your argument and gives examples of why the changes are beneficial. This is especially helpful when you have an important launch and want to reach the maximum percentage of your target audience.