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Measuring your Marketing - Which bits work?

Guest post by: Karen McNulty

Article Overview: These days there are so many creative ways to market your products or services that it's easy to get caught up in trying all sorts of stuff and then never really know which activity gets you the best results. From websites and e-shots, to signs in the window and flyers, they will all have an effect (you hope) and it's time you knew how much of an effect so that you can spend your future budgets wisely.

Measuring your Marketing - Which bits work?

Here are some easy techniques to get started, which, after a bit of practice, will come as second nature:

Telephone Calls

If you get a telephone enquiry, ask the caller where they heard about you. If you have employees, make sure they know to do this too. Keeping a sheet of paper or book handy by the phone is a good way to prompt people to do it or, if you're using computers, a shared spreadsheet will do the trick. At the end of the week or month, tot them up and you should see a pattern straight away.

Sending Direct Mail

Include a reply coupon or card if you can; if not, make sure there's a reference on the mailshot with the phone number so that you can track which flyer/mailshot it was that prompted somebody to contact you.

Your Website

Websites are fabulous because now you can track just about everything (except possibly shoe size). First of all, if you've got some form of enquiry form, prompt users to fill in a "how they found you" box. This is best if it's in a drop down menu so they don't have to think about it too hard and, even better, if they have to fill it in to send the enquiry. As long as you make this easy to do it shouldn't be a problem.

Then there is statistical software - either supplied by your website designer or you can use something mainstream like Google Analytics. Your website provider usually has a stats package they would recommend and it's often part of your web "package". Google Analytics is free but you do need your website provider to add some code to your website pages for it to work. Either way, these are usually pass-worded online systems which will tell you things like how many visits you had today and where they came from (including which search engine, or, if you're interested, whether they're based in Timbuctoo or Brighton).

All of this sounds great, but you must remember to act on it. We quite often find that one week or one month is not enough data to go on, so with all of your information get at least a few months' worth of figures to make sure you make the right decisions. Putting together a quick table with all the figures you've collected from different sources will often give you an "at a glance" revelation! If you've clearly got some marketing activity that never gets you customers - do you really need to keep doing it?

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Article Tags: direct mail, eshots, flyers, marketing, marketing budgets, signs, websites



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