We see so many advertisements in a single day that often we tune them out. A glance tells us all we need to know and whether we are interested in the product or not. Advertising can be hit or miss, but you can save more money if you hit most of the time. Are you advertising your business in the right places?
About twenty or thirty years ago, advertising was not as sophisticated as it is now. Even now, with more traditional methods of advertising, the proof is in the sales at the end of the quarter or in the monthly receipts. An advertising campaign implemented in January can be evaluated in April as to its effectiveness. That’s a long time to wait to find out that your strategy wasn’t as successful as you’d hoped.
What are your business needs? One of them is data analysis. This is how statistics are generated — from the hundreds or thousands of numbers and demographic datasets compiled by research companies and company reports. With the Internet, that information can be in your hand in a much shorter length of time. You can find out almost immediately if the advertising method you chose is working.
Choose a variety of advertising methods. This includes a mix of on and offline tools. Online, software has been created that allows website users to track unique data for their sites.
You can determine how many unique visitors come to your site. With ad programs like Google AdWords and banner ads, you learn the click-through rate for your ads. Online coupons can be tagged with code or a numbered sequence to track when and if they are redeemed. If the numbers steadily go down with online coupons, it’s time to try something else.
Opt-in tools like free registration or referral systems increase the information you know about your customers. With names, addresses, and email, you can see where your customer base is centered. With this information you can create personal emails to target certain customers. Adding links to your site in the email can track those who use it to visit you.
With more traditional methods of advertising, the analysis comes a lot slower. To speed up the process, you can form focus groups, send out questionnaires yourself, or hire a research company to conduct surveys through the mail. They do it for a living, so they’ll have more time to analyze this data.
Spikes in sales will be noticed even if they can’t be quantified. If you have ten people on average in your store through the week and, after you’ve placed your ad in the newspaper you have three times as many, you’d think that advertising rate was a winner. You are gaining more traffic. Once they are in the door, it is up to you to seal the deal.
There is no question that Internet advertising methods bring a quicker evaluation of the results of your efforts. That doesn’t mean that traditional methods won’t work. With both, look to methods that will reach your target audience.