3 simple ways to track the success of your local advertising

If you want to know the best place to advertise so that you can repeat your success time after time, it pays real dividends to take a planned approach to identifying the source of your enquiries. In this way you can keep an eye on the performance of your adverts and keep on top of what really works for you. Ultimately, the best advert is the one that works.

Once you have found that winning formula, the only way for your business is up. Keep experimenting and improving and your business will grow. With something like Google Analytics, the wonderful tool that helps you see who has visited your website for example, it is a straightforward matter to see the wood for the trees. But with most other forms of advertising it appears at first glance to be a much more complex issue.

For example, what is the point in spending money on radio advertising, if you don’t actually know if it is working for you? Granted, we’re all manically busy so it can be difficult making the time, but without checking we run the risk of wasting money on ineffective marketing!

So let’s make tracking simple, in 3 easy steps:

1. When you begin an advertising campaign, ask all new enquiries into your business where they heard of you or what prompted them to contact you. Make sure that everyone in your business knows about the advertising too so that they can do the same. 

2. If you like a belt and braces approach, put a key word in your advert. For example, “to take advantage of our special offer quote SPECIAL when you contact us.” 

3. During your advertising period (and for a reasonable period after) keep a record of which enquiries were directly attributable to your advert. With a column for how much your bookings were worth, you will be able to clearly identify how much bang you got for your buck, AND which advertising method worked the best.

If you would like some help or advice on how to track the success of your local advertising, email us at greg@localadvertisingthatworks.com and we’ll give you some input, absolutely free!

Please note: This article was written by an external author. Any opinions or advice shared by the author are their own and not indicative of any official advice or opinions of Thomson Local or its employees.