A businessperson once said that she knew one half of her advertising expenditure was wasted. The problem was she was not sure which half that was.
Is that how you feel about your advertising spending? If so, then you need to test and track your ads for effectiveness.
Advertising is expensive. We all understand that.
We also realize that spending money on paid advertising can bring in many new customers. The problem lies with a failure to recognize that all advertising vehicles are equal.
Some ads may return numerous visitors. Some may result in high conversion rates. Some may provide both. Others might get no response at all. The only way you can tell which ad is working for you, and which one is enjoying a paid holiday, is to track and test them.
Tracking ads involves mechanisms to show which ads are sending traffic from different locations. Testing involves knowing which ad works best in a specific location.
By combining these powerful tools, a website owner will know which ads are working better than others, and how each advertising medium is producing as well.
Tracking the game
No advertising materials should ever be employed by your business without some form of tracking system. A simple code will suffice. All it needs to do is indicate which advertising vehicle sent the visitor to your site.
Many companies resort to asking the question, “How did you hear about us?” While nice in principle, the question is ineffective in practice.
Most people don’t remember, or even know how they arrived at the site. They certainly won’t know which advertising material they read and followed. Their answers won’t help, if in fact they even tell you at all.
Place a simple tracking code on the advertisement, so the click registers on the site visitor logs as to its origin, is possible. Another easy idea is a separate landing page for each separate advertisement.
For incoming phone calls, place a different “extension” number on each ad material. The same technique can be used for mailed in responses. A different “department” number will work well, separating the results quite nicely.
While none of these concepts is ground breaking, they are very easy to employ. Not many businesses utilize them effectively. Without knowing which marketing pieces are sending customers, and which are not, you will never know which ones are complete waste of money.
Testing the waters
Some advertisements bring in more business than others. That is a given. What is also important to remember, is some changes in the advertising copy and design, can make an ad even more effective than before.
Every business person wants to have more effective marketing, but to fully take advantage of any improvements, they need to be tested.
The results of the original ad must always be compared to the returns from a slightly changed version. Sometimes content changes are for the better, and sometimes the alterations create worse results. Without testing the different variations, you never know which copy and design is more effective than another.
Many purchased ad spaces let the buyer change the advertising copy at certain intervals. Take advantage of the opportunity, to test different versions of the marketing material.
To test advertising copy, try two different formats and designs of the same ad. Make only one change in the copy at a time to determine which version works best.
If possible, run both versions at the same time, keeping careful records of the resulting click throughs and conversions. By utilizing a simple tracking device, the effectiveness of each test can be calculated. When a version of the ad that works well is discovered, try another change elsewhere in the ad.
Keep testing and tracking different advertising materials, to uncover the best possible marketing device.
The tested results, of course, should be logged through careful tracking. Note that testing different versions and tracking the results work together to provide a better understanding of the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. One won’t work very well without the other.
With the visitor logs, or other tracking system records in hand, a series of tests can turn a very poorly producing ad into a much better one. If the same ad copy is used in multiple locations, the new and improved version can be tested as a replacement for other purchased spots as well.
Putting testing and tracking to work for you
Start by taking an inventory of all of your ads both online and offline. If you have any way to track their effectiveness up to this point, take advantage of those materials.
They might be in the form of landing pages from banners, classified ads, or a newsletter placement. These rough results will provide an initial idea of what ads are providing some return.
Following that examination, you will at least have some idea of what is happening.
Immediately implement a tracking system for every advertisement that you can. Track the results for thirty days to get an early sample of the results.
After the weak performers are located, either drop them entirely, or make some testable changes in the copy.
Use testing and tracking, to keep your advertising materials working for you, and not the other way around.
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