Measure Marketing Results: 6 Tips
 By Terry M. Blair

You can spend a bundle of money on marketing your small business to potential customers.

But you might be wasting money if you don’t know the results of your marketing efforts.

The only way to know whether your marketing dollars are well-spent is to track the responses you get to advertising, direct mail, e-mail campaigns and other marketing strategies. Here are six ideas you can use.

1. Ask!
Ask customers, “How did you hear about my business?” This old-fashioned, low-tech method still works.

When potential clients call your business or send you an e-mail, ask them how they heard about you. And ask everyone who contacts your business, not just those who purchase a product or service.

Keep a running tally of the answers you get and you’ll learn which marketing tactics are working best for your small business.

You can give this method a high-tech twist by posting a survey on your Web site.

Simply ask every visitor to your site to complete a quick survey like this:

How did you hear about my business?

• Friend

• Search engine

• Yellow pages

• Direct mail

• Publication ad

• Link from another site

• I’m a repeat customer

The visitor checks the appropriate box, and presto! Now you know how Web site visitors are finding your business.

2. Dedicate a phone number
Dedicate a phone line for marketing responses and track the number of calls from each of your marketing strategies.

List the dedicated number in newspaper ads, in your Yellow Pages or in direct mail pieces. The dedicated line might be a local number or an 800 number.

3. Dedicate an e-mail address
Just like a telephone number, you can also dedicate an e-mail address to receive all responses from online marketing.

For instance, you could have one e-mail address specifically for handling inquiries and orders from existing clients. Then set up a different address for answering questions from potential customers.

By tracking the number of responses you receive at the dedicated e-mail address, you’ll know how well your online marketing is pulling interest.

4. Use Coupons
Coupons make it easy to track your marketing responses.

You simply offer the coupon and tell customers to bring it in to receive a discount or even a freebie. Then you tally up the number of coupons you receive.

You can code the coupons so you know how customers received them. Or you can design a different-looking coupon for each marketing venue so you’ll know by looking at them which coupon placement pulled the most responses.

You might also want to test different offers in your coupons. For example in an e-mail campaign, you could offer 20 percent off to some recipients and buy-one-get-one-free to others. See which gets the most response.

Even service businesses can use coupons to measure marketing effectiveness. Offer a free consultation, a free estimate or a free checklist to new customers who bring in a coupon.

Where and how can you use coupons? Consider these ideas:

• On your Web site (visitors can print them out and return them)

• In ads that you run in newspapers and local publications

• As a postcard in a direct mail campaign

• In e-mail marketing (again, recipients can print them out and return them)

• In coupons booklets sold by neighborhood associations, local schools and nonprofit associations

• In coupon packages (like Valpak) that are mailed in bulk to residents in certain geographic areas

5. Tally Your Results
After a few months of measuring your marketing, you’ll know what’s working and what’s not.

Earmark more of your budget to the marketing activities that get you noticed. And stop wasting money on areas that aren’t pulling in new customers.



(Posted August 2007)

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