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October 01, 2007 | Written By Mason Hipp
It’s a huge undertaking for a small business owner to launch an advertising campaign, and when it does happens it feels like you can finally sit back and wait for the customers.
Unfortunately, most ad campaigns don’t work that way (unless you’re very lucky). Most of them start out so-so, and with a lot of improvement, become truly excellent.
Good measurement will help you cut your losses on campaigns that have no potential, find campaigns that do have potential, and ramp up anything that’s already working well.
It can sometimes be tricky to measure your campaign results, but when you do finally set it up, it’s usually worth it.
Measuring campaign results usually comes down to two things: finding how many customers each campaign is bringing in, and storing that data. Of course, a lot of systems can measure much more than this, but for starters you’ll just want to know where the calls are coming from.
How do you do this?
The easiest way to measure is to ask all of your new customers how they found you. It’s become a common practice now, and they probably won’t even blink at the question. All you have to do after that is put the information into a spreadsheet or database. Eh Voila, you have measurement.
Here are some other ways to capture information:
- Google Analytics (for websites)
- Special “doorway” phone numbers
- Unique coupon codes
- Your own observations
Capturing good data on your advertising is only half of the battle; using that information is the other part. Thankfully, this half is fairly straight forward:
1. Cut your losses on any campaigns that cost more money than they bring in.
2. Boost spending on anything that brings in more than it costs.
3. Tweak and adjust any campaigns that are close to becoming profitable.
Advertising is never a static thing (you’ll hear me say that a lot about marketing a small business) and it takes some trial and error to find what works best. You’ve got to measure, learn, adapt, improve, and anything else that might bring in a few more customers. The small business world is a brutal one, and the survivors are the ones who fight it out and keep improving.
I agree that measurement is a vital part of any small business’ daily activities. If a business wants to spend a few hundred dollars on an ad or even donate $20 to a local charity event, it would be good to know which effort is worth it. The results could be extremely surprising!!! Marketing is is not only about quantity, it is also about quality, and measuring results helps find the true quality of certain campaigns.
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