Does Your Advertising Pay for Itself?
Most ads you see today, whether on TV or in print, fall into the image ad category. Not that a good image isn’t important. Every business needs one. But if you don’t ask for a response you probably won’t get one.
How can you tell if your image advertising is getting you more clients or sales? Tracking results from this type of advertising can be tricky. You can certainly track your sales weekly or monthly. But how do you know if your ad brought in those customers? They may have just seen your business while driving by or another customer may have referred them.
Direct response ads are specifically designed for an immediate response. These ads sell. In fact, the hardest working salesman you employ is your direct response ad. And if you aren’t satisfied it’s doing the job you can change a headline or a few key words or phrases and run the ad again.
Two common methods successful businesses use to track the response to an ad are coupons and response codes.
Make the entire ad a coupon. This serves two purposes. One, the customer can’t forget where you are if they have the entire ad in their hand. Just make sure your address and phone number are in the ad. Two, you can count them at the end of the day or week and tell immediately how many of your sales were generated by your ad. When we still owned our retail store, my wife used to staple a copy of the cash register sales slip to the ad. That way we not only tracked how many sales were made but we could compare the quality of the sales vs. the average sale. This kind of information is invaluable. It enables you to tweak and test your sales copy for the number of responses as well as the quality of the sales.
A good method of tracking an online ad or sales site is the offer number. You can program this function into your shopping cart or response mechanism so it is completely transparent to the customer.
Many mail-order catalog companies print a key code on the address label. When you call in to their toll free number the operator asks for this code along with your name and address. This provides automatic feedback on what is working. If you have more than one version of a catalog or your offer expires in a limited time frame the key code is a necessity.
If you run more than one yellow page ad, the simplest and most effective way to track which book is sending you the most customers is to use a different telephone number for each ad. Keep a pad by each phone and teach your employees to make a mark each time that particular phone rings. You will likely find only one or two books drive most of your sales. Another great thing about using this method of tracking is the fact you can try different ads in various books and see which one works better.
No matter what methods you use, track your ads carefully. It’s the only way to see if your ads pay for themselves or if you are just wasting your advertising dollars.
How can you tell if your image advertising is getting you more clients or sales? Tracking results from this type of advertising can be tricky. You can certainly track your sales weekly or monthly. But how do you know if your ad brought in those customers? They may have just seen your business while driving by or another customer may have referred them.
Direct response ads are specifically designed for an immediate response. These ads sell. In fact, the hardest working salesman you employ is your direct response ad. And if you aren’t satisfied it’s doing the job you can change a headline or a few key words or phrases and run the ad again.
Two common methods successful businesses use to track the response to an ad are coupons and response codes.
Make the entire ad a coupon. This serves two purposes. One, the customer can’t forget where you are if they have the entire ad in their hand. Just make sure your address and phone number are in the ad. Two, you can count them at the end of the day or week and tell immediately how many of your sales were generated by your ad. When we still owned our retail store, my wife used to staple a copy of the cash register sales slip to the ad. That way we not only tracked how many sales were made but we could compare the quality of the sales vs. the average sale. This kind of information is invaluable. It enables you to tweak and test your sales copy for the number of responses as well as the quality of the sales.
A good method of tracking an online ad or sales site is the offer number. You can program this function into your shopping cart or response mechanism so it is completely transparent to the customer.
Many mail-order catalog companies print a key code on the address label. When you call in to their toll free number the operator asks for this code along with your name and address. This provides automatic feedback on what is working. If you have more than one version of a catalog or your offer expires in a limited time frame the key code is a necessity.
If you run more than one yellow page ad, the simplest and most effective way to track which book is sending you the most customers is to use a different telephone number for each ad. Keep a pad by each phone and teach your employees to make a mark each time that particular phone rings. You will likely find only one or two books drive most of your sales. Another great thing about using this method of tracking is the fact you can try different ads in various books and see which one works better.
No matter what methods you use, track your ads carefully. It’s the only way to see if your ads pay for themselves or if you are just wasting your advertising dollars.
posted by Perry Droast @ 12:18 AM
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