Measure Your Marketing

Advertising effectiveness is really quite simple to measure. It's all about numbers!

The purpose of advertising is to persuade potential buyers that they want and need what you have to offer. Successful advertising creates and nurtures that sense of need, and then incites people to get up and go get whatever you are promoting.

Are your advertising dollars meeting this objective? Is your promotional program reaching its intended audience? How can you tell?

Advertising may take several forms. The results of each are measured differently.

Television Advertising

These are evaluated in many ways. Consumer surveys, industry awards, and Nielson television ratings are a few. Some infomercials (basically ad-driven programming) and other ads will list a specific web-site or toll-free number for customers to use. All inquiries through that specific address or number may be directly linked and quantified to that particular ad.

Print Ads

Advertisements in magazines, newspapers, and other printed items are extremely popular. Like TV ads, some include specific web addresses or phone numbers.

Industry-related publications usually include sewn-in postcards (known as Bingo Cards) that contain numbers corresponding to ads in the issue. Readers mark the numbers to request additional information. The publications supply this contact information to advertisers. In this way, companies who advertise in these magazines know exactly how effective their ads were.

Direct Mail Campaigns

Every day, mailboxes around the world are filled with printed promotional pieces. Many include response cards (postcards) for requesting additional information, price quotations, or sales calls. These cards contain serial numbers or other identifying information that tells marketers how effective their ad efforts are.

Yellow Pages

Effectiveness of advertising in the phone book is simple to measure. Many ads actually list a contact name with the phone number. Often, this is a fictitious name. Receptionists or telemarketers are alerted to a series of such names. (Charles Cook might indicate the Chicago Yellow Pages, for example, while Bruce Brown might signal Boston. Harold Green might point to Home and Garden, if similar ads appeared there.) Employees who answer such calls keep tallies of which names are requested, to measure which ads drew the most responses.

Online Advertising

Web ads are the simplest of all to measure. Most tracking is automatic. Web-site managers can collect statistical and specific information about prospective customers and their purchasing habits. Site statistics software can indicate where inquiries originated and even which web pages they visited.

Playing by Number

Justifying advertising budgets used to require a lot more creativity. Now ad managers can play it by the numbers and provide quantitative data, just as much as their manufacturing and sales counterparts can!