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| | The Marketing, Channels/Partnership & Sales Execs Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | How do you track advertising? | Views: 852 | | Dec 11, 2004 4:04 pm | | How do you track advertising? | # | 
Brian Smith | | I have recently started a business, and we have been officially open for less than a week. Our store is located in an area under development, so 80% of the bays in our area are not open.
My partner wants to advertise, but I am stuck on the concept of word-of-mouth growth and relationship development. I like to be able to track and quantify results. When we sent an announcement mailer to the surrounding neighborhoods, I offered a free cup of tea for people who returned the card. I also am tracking our personal/business contacts through an e-mail campaign and newsletter.
When you do advertising through radio, cable television, newspapers, etc, how do you track results to show ROI?
Brian Smith
Teavangelist
www.TheTeaSmith.com Private Reply to Brian Smith | | Dec 12, 2004 9:30 am | | re: How do you track advertising? | # |
G Barry | | Brian,
Simple answer....you don't. Advertising is a part of the overall Marketing mix. If you have a coherent Brand Strategy, all parts will uniformly and coherently push the same messages to the same target audience. To single out one source is erroneous. When I was advertising for major new homebuilders in the Bay Area, we found that the number one source of advertising that brought them to the homes was listed as “street signs.” Upon further review we discovered people would often just list the last form of Marketing to touch them. Were the streets signs really more a part of the decision-making process than the ad that they read that told them price, competitive advantage and location? Was the brand name that was built over the last 30-years really worth nothing in the process? What about word-of-mouth? Lack of negative word-of-mouth would make them perceive the signs one way as opposed to bad P.R. Have a succinct and coherent Brand strategy and realize that they all add up to how you are perceived (and therefore your ads) and don’t try to fault Advertising just because it is your most expensive form of controlled-messaging. Try thinking about it fom your target audience's point-of-view. What form of Marketing adds you to their consideration set? What do THEY think? Being on the side of a NASCAR racing car may attract one type of patron and not another.
Gerard
> Brian Smith wrote:
> I have recently started a business, and we have been officially open for less than a week. Our store is located in an area under development, so 80% of the bays in our area are not open.
>
>My partner wants to advertise, but I am stuck on the concept of word-of-mouth growth and relationship development. I like to be able to track and quantify results. When we sent an announcement mailer to the surrounding neighborhoods, I offered a free cup of tea for people who returned the card. I also am tracking our personal/business contacts through an e-mail campaign and newsletter.
>
>When you do advertising through radio, cable television, newspapers, etc, how do you track results to show ROI?
>
>Brian Smith
>Teavangelist
>www.TheTeaSmith.com Private Reply to G Barry | | Dec 12, 2004 7:44 pm | | re: re: How do you track advertising? | # | 
Mark Newman | | I think that someone who has just started a business actually can have informal tracking success -- by mere face-to-face conversation with your customers. If you've just started and are building a customer base, if you have a walk-up store, and if you advertise on radio, be especially conversational with your patrons in the early going and simply ask them where they found out about you. Sometimes the simplest techniques work the best.
At this stage of your game, you can also simply put a pad and pencil on the counter and have your paying customers check the box listing how they found out about you, include their name, and then put it into a jar to be entered for a drawing to get a free whatever the next time.
There is a margin of error but you will get an idea of how people are getting your message. Good luck.
Mark Newman
> Gerard Barry wrote:
> Brian,
>
>Simple answer....you don't. Advertising is a part of the overall Marketing mix. If you have a coherent Brand Strategy, all parts will uniformly and coherently push the same messages to the same target audience. To single out one source is erroneous. When I was advertising for major new homebuilders in the Bay Area, we found that the number one source of advertising that brought them to the homes was listed as “street signs.” Upon further review we discovered people would often just list the last form of Marketing to touch them. Were the streets signs really more a part of the decision-making process than the ad that they read that told them price, competitive advantage and location? Was the brand name that was built over the last 30-years really worth nothing in the process? What about word-of-mouth? Lack of negative word-of-mouth would make them perceive the signs one way as opposed to bad P.R. Have a succinct and coherent Brand strategy and realize that they all add up to how you are perceived (and therefore your ads) and don’t try to fault Advertising just because it is your most expensive form of controlled-messaging. Try thinking about it fom your target audience's point-of-view. What form of Marketing adds you to their consideration set? What do THEY think? Being on the side of a NASCAR racing car may attract one type of patron and not another.
>
>Gerard
>
>
>> Brian Smith wrote:
>> I have recently started a business, and we have been officially open for less than a week. Our store is located in an area under development, so 80% of the bays in our area are not open.
>>
>>My partner wants to advertise, but I am stuck on the concept of word-of-mouth growth and relationship development. I like to be able to track and quantify results. When we sent an announcement mailer to the surrounding neighborhoods, I offered a free cup of tea for people who returned the card. I also am tracking our personal/business contacts through an e-mail campaign and newsletter.
>>
>>When you do advertising through radio, cable television, newspapers, etc, how do you track results to show ROI?
>>
>>Brian Smith
>>Teavangelist
>>www.TheTeaSmith.com Private Reply to Mark Newman | | Dec 13, 2004 11:52 pm | | re: How do you track advertising? | # | 
Jeff Klingberg | | Brian,
Tracking your marketing communications is essential to understanding what messages, promotions, etc. are causing your target audience to act. Also, is it rather simple, but time consuming as well.
Let's start with direct mail. This is really quite the easiest to develop tracking on. Let's say you have 4 different messages going to one community or it is going to 4 seperate communities. You can have a coupon in the mailing piece. That coupon could have a different number or code on it or the each mail piece could be printed on a different color paper. So mhen people bring in the coupon that say is blue, you will know that it came from "X" community or "Y" message/incentive.
The same method can be used for print, TV or radio advertising. For example, if the newspaper is the "Town Squirer" put a coupon in the ad with some code for the "Town Squirer" and for each publication you use have a different code. Or for each message/incentive use a different code for that publication and message. In radio, it is very common to have in the copy, mention that you heard this ad on "KMOX" to get a free newspaper, etc. TV is a little bit more difficult but not much, you can place a code in the add or a secret word and if they say the secret word or code you know they saw the ad.
Email campaigns you can track the same way, but their you can also track much more information such as who open the email, who deleted it, who went to your website, etc. etc. If you also develop an e-newsletter you can find out what articles they read. So that ultimately you can devise a database driven e-newsletter that is personalize to each and every consumer in your target audience.
Additionally, with all of these communication channels you can establish and subdomain as a landing page which will assist you in determining where people came from to get to your site. That brings me to hosting reports such as webtrends. It is essential for you to daily, weekly or monthly generate a report that allows you to find out what search engine, key words, etc. people are using to find your website. Then optimize your website copy and code to maximize visibilty.
In any of these cases there are several things that are a must. First, you must establish goals/objectives that can be measured. Second, you must establish metrics for each of these goals. Third, you must educate your employees to be vigilent in asking for a coupon, code, etc. and keeping track of that. It makes no sense to develop tracking capablities but not have anyone keeping track of this information.
I hope this helps. If you have any questions, contact me privately.
Sincerely,
Jeff Klingberg
President/CEO
Konstanz Kommunikations, Inc. Private Reply to Jeff Klingberg | | |
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