Measurable Marketing is Easier Than You think

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half"

So said Jon Wanamaker, US department store merchant in the late 1800s. But you'll have heard many others quote this since, because advertising has been notoriously difficult to track, vexing even the best marketers for years. The reason for this is that data has been unreliable - even if you ask somebody where they heard about you, you're relying on them:

(a) Remembering
(b) Remembering it correctly

I recently put some thought to how much of our marketing can be measured now, so that you know what works and what doesn't. Having put together a good marketing plan, you need to know what got you the best results, ready for your next plan. If you do this with all of your marketing you should get better targeted marketing year on year and hopefully a better return on investment.

I came up with ten tips for measurable marketing activity in 2009:

1. Pay per click advertising, either on search engines such as Google, or social networking websites - as you have access to instant statistics for every advert that you run, including number of "clicks" and even "conversions" to sales or other activities that your visitor undertook.
2. Run a promotion or advertisement with a different telephone number then you know that all calls that come in on that number are related to that advertising campaign.
3. Start a blog...you can track the number of visitors to your website from the blog
4. Send a direct mail-shot and track it with a unique reference number or promotional code.
5. Tweet (Twitter) or join another public social network such as setting up a Facebook business page or LinkedIn public page. You can track referrals to your website and "mentions" of your business name or product.
6. Email marketing - find out how many people opened your email and what they did next.
7. Telemarketing - track every phone call, gather market intelligence and feedback
8. YouTube - are you an expert? Post a video on YouTube and track page views
9. Free online giveaway - collect email addresses to receive your free download/gift and count them!
10. Editorial - getting some press coverage either on or offline can be tracked with cuttings (offline) and equated to the equivalent advertising cost, or tracked online with Google Alerts.

I could go on... You can find some more good tips from Goris.com and some interesting info from Business Link about online marketing including the fact that it is so measurable. Meanwhile I'm pleased that as a marketer I can finally produce evidence and be more accountable for my clients. That's how it should be.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Pay per Click Targeting Makes Advertising More Attractive

I've been researching pay per click advertising models in more depth recently as I help some of my clients to understand how it works and when to use it. Up until a few months ago, Google Adwords was becoming widely adopted by marketers for pay per click advertising (the sponsored results you see on the right hand page of Google's search results). Many of us thought this was enough as in The UK Google has around 80% share of the search market.

Other search engines have always offered it but suddenly their targeting has improved and with the advent of pay per click advertising in social networks such as Facebook we're getting more switched onto a more strategic "mix" of online advertising spend rather than giving it all to Google.

• Yahoo not so long ago added improved targeting options for advertisers which meant that instead of just search terms we could narrow by location and other demographic criteria. You can read more in this practical e-commerce blogpost about Yahoo advertising.
• Facebook pay per click uses incredibly powerful profiling (using information provided by Facebook members when they sign up) which means that your advert will appear to members grouped by not only location but age and other preferences.
• LinkedIn pay per click advertising also uses demographic profiles and now a range of options for LinkedIn advertising payment methods

It's only a matter of time before the likes of Twitter do the same, we're sure. The point is, I used to spend a lot of time talking clients out of spending - no sorry - wasting money on advertising. Today for many businesses it is a highly effective marketing medium and with statistical tracking as standard the results speak for themselves. I'm now in favour of more targeted online advertising, it certainly makes us more accountable as we can't argue with the stats.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Seasonal Marketing for Inspiration

If you're not particularly creative but responsible for marketing your organisation, it can be difficult to constantly come up with new ideas to engage with your target audience.

Time to find out what day it is, or rather what interesting day is coming up. Cue seasonal marketing...

So it's January and you've done Christmas, but then in February we've got Valentine's day, March and April - Easter, Mother's day, May has two bank holidays and so on. Hooking up to one of our celebration events is an excellent way to kick start some creative thinking.

Can you tie in vouchers for any of these occasions? Or theme a discount or promotion around the event? Marks and Spencers came up with a gem in 2008 starting with Valentines day - dine in for £10.00. Brilliant! We're in the throes of credit crunch, we want a solution and with a bit of clever marketing "Your M & S" comes up with the right answer. It must have been good because others followed.

At the moment we really do have to work hard at making any offer attractive, so try this as a starting point.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk