Very few local companies really know how effective their advertising is. They may say, “we ask everyone who calls how they heard about us”, but that is an inexact science at best.

There are two main reasons most advertising isn’t tracked.

1) The advertising mediums (magazines, radio, tv, newspapers, yellow pages, etc) don’t want you to track it. If you knew how ineffective it was you would stop doing it. So, they obviously aren’t recommending it.

2)  It takes work (or at least some thought up front). Most local business owners are so busy putting out fires and wear so many hats within the company this is just one more of those things that although important, isn’t urgent, so it gets pushed aside by more pressing issues.

As a result, most advertisers end up feeling like P.T. Barnam when he said “half of my advertising doesn’t work, I just don’t know which half”.

Let’s take a look at the primary ways you can track your advtising:

• Coupons – for retailers this is an easy one. Simply include a coupon that needs to be brought in to receive a discount.
• Mention this ad – they have to mention the ad to receive something of value (discount, free gift, free consultation, etc)
• Promotional code – they must provide the code to receive a special offer – use a different code for each ad
• Telephone number that is specific to that ad. There are several services that will allow you (for about $20/month per number) to generate a number that is used for each ad you are running. When someone calls that number the call is logged and forwarded to your main phone number. You can then log into their system online and view the number of calls each ad received.
• Website - have a website address (domain name) in the ad that is only used for that ad. You can buy a domain name for under $10/year from GoDaddy.com, 1and1.com or several other domain sellers. Create a domain name for each ad and then have a special page set up on your website for each ad. You then set up a redirect of that domain name so when someone types in the domain name from the ad they are taken to the specific page on your website. You can then set up Google analytics on your site to record how many visits you had to each page.  The reason you want to get separate domain names is so you don’t end up with a big long, hard to remember domain name like www.mysite.com/magazinead1 because many people won’t type in the whole thing, they’ll just type www.mysite.com and you won’t be able to track which ad they came from.

If you are doing internet advertising, tracking results is very easy. There is software that will tell you exactly how many people vistited your website from various ads you were running and can even be set up to rotate sending visitors to two versions of a web page for each ad so you can test which page (headline, language, offer, etc) is most effective.

With internet advertising you can also capture and track leads from intial contact through close. And your return on investment calculations are usually very specific. That is one of the great things about internet advertising, it is ruthlessly accountable, down to the penny.

Doesn’t it make sense to spend a little time putting a tracking system in place before committing to spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month on advertising?

The next time you are considering purchasing advertising ask yourself,  “will I be able to accurately track the effectiveness of this ad?”  If the answer is no – you may want to reconsider that purchase and allocate those dollars to something that is measurable.