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Tracking your efforts, whether it be your advertising methods or the number of times someone comes to one of your websites is no longer an option, it is mandatory. However, as we work with our clients, many have not yet implemented a solid (or any for that matter) and legitimate Tracking method.
Think about this, and I hate to sound so elementary, or even condescending. You spend thousands of dollars each month to attract prospects to respond to your message, but many companies have not implemented the most basic means of having the response to these advertisements tracked. So, what do we recommend?
Breiter Strom is a huge advocate of starting out slowly and then building up to a system that tracks every move you make. But, this is not an "all or nothing" world. To track something, is a heck of a lot better than to track nothing.
So, in this case, start by tracking one form of advertising. Simply have a tracking number on your ad, then, every time someone calls off of that particular ad, you will count "1". Simple. Now you know over a period of time that for a particular advertisement that you received "x" number of calls and you paid "$x" for the ad.
Obviously that is just the start, but it is a good start. Now, you would want to take that to the next level, in order to identify if any of those "callers" turned out to be buyers. This can be easily implemented by putting together a simple Microsoft Excel file if you don't have any other form of software to track this type of activity. Certainly there are many CRM's and ERP's that have sophisticated tracking technology, but our experience is that most of our clients have never been taught how to use these software packages properly, hence they don't use them at all.
By implementing a tracking system, you will have extremely valuable information now at your fingertips that will allow you to make some very important decisions for your company. Like, "what are the best publications to advertise in?" "What is the best day to advertise, or more importantly, what day do we get the best ROI?" Which form of advertising is creating not only the best response, but which form of advertising has the best conversion ratio?" "How many people are visiting our website, and where is the majority of this natural traffic coming from?"
You see, by tracking activity, you all of the sudden have some of the best answers in order to guide your company in making some of the best decisions. And let me go on the record as saying... "You will blow your competition away. Why? Because they are NOT tracking!" How do I know this? Well, we talk to 100's of companies and the constant response for not tracking is generally lack of time, lack of manpower or lack of interest. You will BLOW THEM AWAY!
If you would like to learn more about how implementing a very simple tracking strategy can instantly increase your bottom line, click here to read more.
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