In order to understand the world of marketing, it is perhaps best to get familiar with some of the terminology that is commonly thrown around. One such term (or acronym, rather) is DAGMAR, which stands for Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results.

DAGMAR is absolutely critical to any marketing or advertising campaign, because without it, you’d have no real measure of whether said campaign was a success or a failure. DAGMAR is the actual process of developing, defining, and establishing your goals for a particular ad campaign. These goals will vary widely depending on what you wish to achieve with your particular promotion.

Take blog contests, for example. Way back in May, I talked about how contests are a great bang for your buck, because the only money you really need to put forward is the prize. Invest in something relatively inexpensive that is also very appealing to your target audience. Some people give away iPods, other people give away straight cash. Whatever the case, you need to captivate the interest of your audience and get them to enter your contest.

The key to determining whether your contest was a success or not is to first define what is the goal of your contest. Perhaps you want people to blog about your contest, sending several backlinks your way so that you can improve your search engine presence. Perhaps you want to grow your readership, encouraging contestants to subscribe to your RSS feed. Maybe there is a particular affiliate program that you want to take advantage of, and you’ll base your success on the number of conversions. Whatever it is, you need to first define this goal.

And that’s what DAGMAR, or Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results, is all about. Remember, these have to be measured results. Put an actual number to your goal rather than simply saying that you want to increase RSS subscriptions. Say that you want to increase RSS subscriptions by 25% or 50%. An actual number will make it clear whether the advertising campaign (a blog contest, in this case) was a success.