While choosing the right communication channel and creating an appropriate advertisement are critical to reaching your target market, businesses often neglect to measure the effectiveness of specific ads.
Advertising should generate increases in measurable categories such as new customers, phone inquiries, retail traffic, sales, information requests, Website traffic, or specific page hits.
Here are some suggestions on how to measure the effectiveness of advertising:
1. If you have the budget, consider setting up a media tracking system, using toll-free numbers assigned to specific ads in order to measure customer response rates. You can use this system to track newspaper, radio, television, billboard, direct mail advertising, and more.
2. Motivate customers to help you learn. Offer a 10% discount if they tell you where they saw the advertisement. Be sure to track all responses or totals become negatively skewed.
To measure retail traffic, start tracking visitors to your store before the advertisement runs. Historical data is all you have when comparing pre- and post-advertising traffic.
3. The same goes for sales. Comparing total sales for similar timeframes before, during, and after advertising runs is an important measurement tool. Ads often take time to be effective, so continue measuring sales well after the ad stops running.
4. Measuring Website traffic and click-through rates is relatively easy given today?s online measurement tools. If a more sophisticated program is needed, consider buying a product like WebTrends. From traditional advertising and reader response cards to the ubiquitous insert, magazines offer a variety of advertising alternatives. Again, be sure to assign a specific code to any advertising if you want to measure results.
5. Don?t be afraid to ask customers questions. While this option might take more time, the information you retrieve is often the most valuable. After all, while your initial objective was to measure response rates, you will collect loads of qualitative information about customers, too.
Advertising should generate increases in measurable categories such as new customers, phone inquiries, retail traffic, sales, information requests, Website traffic, or specific page hits.
Here are some suggestions on how to measure the effectiveness of advertising:
1. If you have the budget, consider setting up a media tracking system, using toll-free numbers assigned to specific ads in order to measure customer response rates. You can use this system to track newspaper, radio, television, billboard, direct mail advertising, and more.
2. Motivate customers to help you learn. Offer a 10% discount if they tell you where they saw the advertisement. Be sure to track all responses or totals become negatively skewed.
To measure retail traffic, start tracking visitors to your store before the advertisement runs. Historical data is all you have when comparing pre- and post-advertising traffic.
3. The same goes for sales. Comparing total sales for similar timeframes before, during, and after advertising runs is an important measurement tool. Ads often take time to be effective, so continue measuring sales well after the ad stops running.
4. Measuring Website traffic and click-through rates is relatively easy given today?s online measurement tools. If a more sophisticated program is needed, consider buying a product like WebTrends. From traditional advertising and reader response cards to the ubiquitous insert, magazines offer a variety of advertising alternatives. Again, be sure to assign a specific code to any advertising if you want to measure results.
5. Don?t be afraid to ask customers questions. While this option might take more time, the information you retrieve is often the most valuable. After all, while your initial objective was to measure response rates, you will collect loads of qualitative information about customers, too.
