With advertising budgets being slashed across the nation, it is more important than ever to know which of your marketing efforts actually work. What leads to clicks, calls, and–ultimately–sales? Here are 5 ways to measure the response rate of your marketing:
- Web Analytics: You most likely do this already as you track the incoming sources of traffic to your website. A web analytics tool is a must for any business hoping to determine how customers find its website. Google Analytics is free and is a good way to start exploring these issues. For better or for worse, though, not all of your customer interactions occur online. This is why you need the next item on our list.
- Call Tracking: How can you tell how a customer found your number? Wouldn’t you want to know which of your advertising efforts led to the ten sales calls you received last week? With Call Tracking, you can. Simply insert a unique phone number in each of your marketing ventures. You can then see that of these ten calls, eight used the number your placed in your PPC ads while one came from the contact page of your website and the last from that ad in the local newspaper. Knowing the source of your phone calls gives you a complete picture of the effectiveness of your marketing.
- Social Media: Twitter and Facebook aren’t just about building brand awareness. By using a unique number in, for example, your Twitter bio, you’ll see whether this social networking site is worth the employee hours you devote to it.
- Ask the Customer: This can take a variety of forms: surveys, focus groups, and personal interviews. These techniques may help you gain a more fully-drawn picture of your marketing, as you can ask your customers a series of open-ended questions. The downside is that these methods are anecdotal, they cost you money, and they may alienate some customers. Use judiciously.
- Coupons: Include a unique coupon or promotion code in each of your ads. Simply tally up the uses of each and you’ll be able to tell which ads led to a response. Because there are other opportunities to measure response rates without offering discounts, this is probably best used only if you were planning on using a coupon anyway.