As marketers we want to show a return on investment for our efforts, however, with traditional marketing, this can be difficult. Here you have a few ways you can measure your traditional marketing efforts.
Measuring traditional marketing can be like chasing a puff of smoke. It’s challenging to get it right, and it’s pretty frustrating when you want to show a return on investment for all your efforts. I want to share a few tips on how you can measure your traditional marketing efforts.
Google Annotations
The first thing you will want to do is create an annotation in Google Analytics. This is just a little note for a period of time to say, “Hey we had a billboard up.”, So to create an annotation, what you need to do is click on your Google Analytics timeline, add an annotation for the period of time you had your advertising. This will help you directly compare your website traffic versus when you have your traditional advertising out. It gives you an indication of whether your ad is generating website traffic.
SMS To Register
When possible, the next thing that I like to do is to use SMS features in my traditional ads, such as flyers and magazine ads. SMS to register or SMS to opt-in. This is an easy way for people to opt-in, respond to your ad, and give you a way to measure whether it’s working or not, and it also helps you build your email list because you’ll be collecting their email addresses in the first SMS.
Unique URLs
The next thing you can do to measure your traditional ad is to have a unique URL for a specific ad. This is a little bit of effort, so it depends on the size of your campaign, but if possible, have a unique URL that people visit for that specific ad. This will indicate whether the ad is driving traffic to your website and people are responding to your ad. You can add an incentive for them if they visit that URL.
Surveys
The next thing that you can do to measure traditional advertising is to have a survey of people on your email list who have made previous inquiries. Ask the question, “What are all the ways that you’ve heard about us in the past?”
When measuring traditional advertising, bear in mind that this is for indicative reasons only. It’s not an absolute measure of, “Okay, so we’ve got five new customers because of this traditional ad.” It gives you an indication of if this medium is working better than another medium. Many people will shoot themselves in the foot by being too precise with their measuring, and there may be opportunities to work in the long run.
Traditional advertising is more about brand building and awareness, and you have to understand your customers buying cycle and decision-making process to measure effectively. It may take people two or three months from first seeing a traditional ad to actually register or become a customer.
Questions regarding this article? Please email me at mara@robertsdigital.com.au
