There is a well known saying in advertising that has been variously attributed to Lord Leverhulme, Henry Ford, John Paul Getty and countless other marketers. I guess most of us have said something like it at one time or another:
“50% of my advertising budget is wasted - I just don’t know which half!”
In fact some recent research has indicated that, especially amongst smaller businesses, the waste factor may even be nearer to 90% than 50%! That’s a frightening statistic, particularly when you consider just how expensive advertising can be these days. So what can be done about it?
Well, there is another well known saying - “What you can’t measure, you can’t manage!” Don’t ask me who said it originally, I haven’t a clue. :-) But, let me ask you a question……
Do you know where every new customer, every sale and every enquiry came from?
If you don’t know which advertising produces which results, then rest assured a lot of your advertising budget is going to be wasted. Every advert needs to be tracked and every response recorded against that ad. That way you can check the cost of the ad, the resultant sales revenue and profit and consequently the ROI (Return on Investment) of that advert. When you know which ads are profitable and which aren’t, you can kill off the losers and invest more in the winners - simple yes?
Keying and Tracking
The way to carry out this response measurement activity is to “key” each advert. Typically in Direct Mail advertising, the response card or order form is used to carry a special code or the reply address uses a department number. This code or dept. number is different for every mailshot. Newspaper or magazine advertising may have a special promotional code attached to a discount or free gift, again a different code is used for each advert. Where an ad is designed to elicit a telephone response, it was common in the old days to key an ad with a (usually fictitious) person’s name, e.g. “for immediate attention call the above number and ask for Chris” (a unisex name being preferable). Whoever takes the call then becomes “Chris” and can then log who the caller asked for, thus identifying the ad. A bit long winded, slightly dishonest and not always reliable but workable.
0800 Ad Tracking
Such subterfuge was rendered obsolete with the arrival of freephone numbers and call management technology. It is now possible to “key” each advert with a different 0800 number and leave the call manager software to do all the hard work for you. It will log each call with the 0800 number called; the date, time & duration of the call; and often the callers number too.
An examination of the call manager logs will tell you how many calls came from which ad, when they called, from where they called and how long the call lasted. A little training of the staff taking the calls in recording the result of each call and the value of any resulting sales completes this vital information. You can now easily see which ads pay their way, which lose you money and which are your big earners.
As always, if you need any help with your ad tracking - just ask!