A lot of business owners feel left in the dark when it comes to tracking their advertisements. As mentioned before, a good marketing plan takes advantage of media that can benefit the company. But the question I get is, “How do I know if the advertising is working?”
STALK IT! I don’t literally mean stalk it but track it. Coupons are one of the easiest to track. Whenever a customer uses a coupon, you can see which promotion was used. And if you really are a stalker, you can add codes or create different promotions for different territories to test markets. Web marketing can be used the same way with printable coupons and promotions codes.
TV and radio ads are a little different; you are relying on the customer to remember the promotion in order to take advantage. Some business owners will run their ads for a certain time and track the sales during this time to see the effectiveness of the ad or promotion.
Either way, you need it to be easy for your staff to gather this valuable information from your customers. You may want to supply a simple survey sheet to your customers and/or prompters on cash registers to serve as a reminder for your staff. If you don’t make the effort to gather your advertising stats, there is no way to know. Your bookkeeper or accountant may have some insight to the success of your advertising; but, unless you are on top this, you won’t find out until well after the promotion is over. Hence, our last tip of the week, M+A=BFF.
Be a stalker and track your advertising.