Tracking Your Ads

Tracking your ads takes some effort, however, is crucial if you want to know what advertising and what
message is working.  There are several steps to take to know what part of your advertising is working and which
part is not.  See my ad study article for some insight into this topic.

Also be aware that at the end what counts is the number of sales and the cost of those sales...everthing else is
secondary.

  • Tracking your advertising vehicle
    You can track your ad vehicle such as PPC, Magazines, by
    using separate capture pages and phone #s.   I usually make
    several copies of the same capture page and just use a
    separate aweber code for each advertising I test.  The
    aweber code on each lead capture would tell me where
    the lead came from.    You can also use ad tracking software
    like "Hyper Tracker", which tracks the number of clicks.  
    By creating and using a separate link for each advertising
    the same can be accomplished.

Using these methods you will be able to tell how many responses you have received.  By dividing the
leads generated by the cost of the advertising, you will know the cost per lead ($300 cost / # of Leads =
Cost per lead).

  • Tracking the effectiveness of your ads
    By using different ads with the same ad vehicles you would be able to tell which ads are performing
    better.  To accomplish that, you would run one ad for a week or a mailing and then another a week later.  
    Make sure that you run the same list or mail on the same day of the week the get a correct comparison.  
    Running the same ad on a weekend and then again on a weekday could give you misleading results.
    It is even easier done with PPC which let's you rotate your ads automatically and tells you how each ad is
    performing...very easy.

  • Tracking your visitors on your site
    There are several way to accomplish that.  
    You can use "Google Analytics" or services
    like "Viz Tracker" and many other like it to
    track visitors to individual pages, number of
    page-views and much more.

  • Tracking Your Conversions
    There are several types of conversions you
    should track...click rate (easy to do with PPC),
    response rate (call-ins form Radio,
    Magazines, etc., e-mail open rate, visitors
    to opt-ins, opt-ins to sales, etc.

Click rates and response rates can be calculated
by taking the impressions/clicks or call-ins=click
rate%. The higher the click rate the better the ad.  

    Even though the click rate or response rate is important, the opt-in rate is even more important.  When I
    talk about opt-ins I'm talking about using lead capture pages that have a opt-in form on the page for
    more information.  The % of opt-ins will give a good idea as to how qualified the traffic to the page is.  
    Opt-in rates can range from 3% to 50% depending on the quality of the lead capture page or the quality
    of the traffic.  You need to test all 3 parts of the advertising (the ad, the vehicle and the capture page) to
    get a true picture of your conversions.

  • Tracking Your Sales
    That is where the rubber meets the road as they say.  It all come down to this.  What is your cost per
    sale.  That cost might take several months to calculate depending on the sales cycle.  Most of the sales
    for my home business have converted from 2 to 6 weeks...some have taken even longer.  You can run
    monthly numbers and get a somewhat accurate number starting in month 2 or 3.  If you track your ads,
    you should know where your sales come from.  To calculate the cost per sale for each advertising, simply
    use this formula...cost of advertising / # of sales = Cost per sale.


If your trying to track your free advertising effort, you might not be able to calculate a cost per sale in the same
way.  You might calculate how long it takes to post these ads and see if it is worth all the time you put into
positing to these areas.  

After reading all this, you might ask yourself...that seems to be a lot of work, however, when you see how much
time and money it saves at the end, you will realize that it is definitely worth your time to track your ads.
Special Sections
Marketing
Answers about success and failure
Massive PPV Traffic
Online Marketing Training Boot Camp - Home
SuccessAndFailure.net Marketing Header
Online Marketing Training Boot Camp
"Equipping You To Win The Marketing War"
Success and Failure Top Nav
Marketing Training Home - Marketing Boot Camp - Successful Ad Tracking
Success anf Failure Side Navigation
Success anf Failure Top Nav