So you've now put together your advertising campaign, having first been through all the correct steps of compiling all those Company, Competitor and Market profiles, identified correctly the Target Audience, prepared Creative and Media briefs to the letter and produced a campaign to be proud of, and we can now see some results.

They may be poor, they may be good, they may be excellent and they may be beyond all your expectations (which, incidentally can actually be a problem. I know of one company that had such a sudden avalanche of a response that it almost finished them off!).

Whatever the case there is still important work to do, and that is to analyze thoroughly the reasons behind that level of response as it may not be entirely due to the advertising, and whether the results are poor or excellent there still may be other factors involved such as (depending on the product) the weather, alternative events or even an impending Budget.

We should never believe that sales 'automatically' correlate with an advertising campaign, although it should, of course, have a profound affect if the advertising has been developed correctly.

So to achieve maximum and long term success, we should constantly assess our sales, together with our advertising and together with...

The Market Trends. Was there any change in the Market that may have affected results (as perhaps the original Market Profile was possibly assessed some considerable time before the campaign actually ran).

The Financial Climate. Has there been a recent downturn in the economy that may affect sales of your product, or a Chancellor's Budget that may have affected purchasing patterns?

The Timing. Your post advertising records should log exactly when the campaign ran and exactly the flow of sales.
This will help detect accurate seasonality and optimum timing of future advertising for your product.

The Target Audience Trends. Target audiences DO change, age, sex and particularly with regionality.

The Weather. Depending on your product, changes in the weather could have a profound affect on your sales, such as heatwaves or long term poor weather.

Publicity. Has there been any publicity that may have had an affect on your sales, whether positively or negatively?

Any of these factors may have had an adverse (or a positive)affect on your results as well as the advertising and it's vital that we maintain a thorough and constant analysis to help paint that bigger picture of what exactly is happening!

And the more information you have, the more effective your future advertising will be.

CHECK, TEST, ANALYZE...THEN CHECK, TEST ANALYZE AGAIN!