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