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 How do you know whether your
advertising is effective or not? The answer is to
track advertising response for each ad you run.
Whether you operate a retail store, a service
business, a mail order operation, or an Internet
marketing business, you can measure the
effectiveness of your advertising.
1. Which Publications Produce Profits?
When new customers phone or visit you, ask how they
found out about you. They might say they found you
through your yellow pages ad or your newspaper ad.
Record the responses and resulting sales from each
ad. Then, analyze whether each particular
advertisement is producing the desired results.
If an advertisement consistently produces profits
for you, keep running it. On the other hand, if an
ad consistently performs poorly or produces a loss,
discontinue it.
In mail order, you can key each ad so that you can
measure the resulting sales from each publication.
For example, you could add "Dept. A" to
your name or address in the ad to indicate the July
issue of a particular magazine. Key it as
"Dept. B" for the August issue of the same
magazine. "Dept. C" could indicate the
July issue of a different magazine you advertise in.
Thus, as orders come in, you can track the response
and sales made from each advertisement. From that
information, you can easily determine the
profitability of your ad in each publication.
2. Which Ads Produce Profits?
Not only can ad tracking show you which publications
are profitable to advertise in, but it will also
help you measure the effectiveness of the ads
themselves.
If you change your ad, and the results for the new
ad are consistently better or worse, you can take
the appropriate action; either continue or
discontinue the advertisement.
Change only one element in an ad at a time.
For example, if you decide to change the price,
don't change the headline. Otherwise, you won't know
if the difference in results was due to the changed
price or the changed headline. For greater
certainty, change only one thing at a time when
testing your ads.
On the Internet, you can use tracking software and
services that will aid you to determine the source
of your sales and the effectiveness of your
advertising, article writing, and other activities.
So, whether you operate a retail store, a service
business, a mail order operation, or an Internet
marketing business, use ad tracking for increased
profits.
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