Before we dive into tracking advertising, we must evaluate your purpose so that we can define the goals. Businesses advertise for several reasons with most common reasons including:

1. Branding (awareness) – This goal defines a less immediate return with a focus on long-term gains. Applications such as TV, Radio and Billboard advertising align with branding goals.
2. Lead Acquisition – This goal defines more actionable return that provides leads that can be nurtured and solicited for future revenue gains. Social media advertising, display advertising (banner ads) and search advertising align with lead acquisition goals.
3. Sales (transaction) – While increasing revenue is the ultimate goal for almost all businesses, not all can make this the goal for all advertising due to the longer length of sales cycles. If your organization has capabilities of processing sales on your website, then this goal may be ideal for you. Digital advertising identified in lead acquisition goals also work well for sales goals.

IMPORTANT: If you cannot define your goals, then rest of this article will not be beneficial. I recommend solidifying your goals before doing any advertising. Otherwise, it is impossible to determine success or failure.

Ad Tracking Methods

So, now we evaluate the basic seven effective advertising tracking methods. The list below ranks in tracking methods in order of complexity (from easy to complex).

1. Sales
   Once you start advertising, most companies will either see sales go up or not. If it goes up, then advertising is effective. This tracking method is the most simple. For example: let’s say you start advertising your store or product in June. If you have a short sales cycle, you will see sales remain consistent, increase or decrease in June. If sales increase, you can assume a good advertising decision, If sales decline or stay consistent, you could assume a bad advertising decision. software is needed for this method.
2. Item Tracking/Lost Leader
   With this method, a particular product or service will be promoted. If this product or service receives more customer interest once you start advertising, then you can anticipate the advertising method was successful. You can use software to evaluate effectiveness, but a simple ROI calculation will do.Sample Calculation: You promote XYZ product for a month in ABC publication for $400. Once the month is over, you evaluate volume of XYZ product sold compared to a previous, comparable timeframe (like the previous month). Assuming you had an increase of 30 products sold. The profit from each product sold is $50. You can calculate 30 x $50 = $1500.ROI (actual): 1500 – 400. ROI: $1,200
3. Word Flag (Ideal for Offline Stores)
   This historic method is one of my least favorites, but is still quite simple and can be effective. To use word flag, you would put a statement like “mention this ad” or “bring this ad into the store for a 10% discount” in our advertisement. If you get many responses from customers, then it could be determined the advertisement was effective. You can simply evaluate the effectiveness of the ad by volume of responses. There is no needed software, but you will need to figure out how you keep up with paper clippings or mentions to your staff.
4. Survey
   Surveys are a popular method of tracking that can vary on difficulty, depending on software and implementation. This method requires you ask where the customer heard about you. If you have an offline store, your sales person can ask and manually enter the response into your POS system. Or if you have an online store, you can add the field to your web form. Alternatively, you can send an email out after the sale in more of a traditional format asking your customers how they found out about your store or product. Note: this method can be unreliable as many times customers don’t know how they found out about you or they just select one of the first options.
5. Coupon Code
   Using coupons is one of my favorite methods to track advertising. The concept is simple, but the deployment and tracking is a bit more technical. This process is best explained with a scenario. In an advertisement in a print publication, you offer 10% off to anyone that uses the code “bananas”. In an email sent to a subscriber list of a publication, you offer the same 10% off to anyone that uses the code “apples”. Then, after a certain time period, you can evaluate if you received more coupon users with the code “bananas” vs “apples”. Once you determine which brings in the most sales, then you can be more confident continuing one advertising method (print or email) over the other. You will need special software for this tracking method, which usually is tied into your CMS, shopping cart or POS.
6. Phone Number Tracking  (technical)
   Similar to coupon code tracking, you can utilize phone number tracking. This method will require specialized software as well – usually as plugins or standard offerings with your CMS, shopping cart or POS. With this method, you would have access to many phone numbers that all ring to your sales staff. Then, you would only use particular phone numbers for particular advertising mediums. See the scenario below. In a TV commercial, you make the statement “Call 800.555.1234”. During the same timeframe, you also have a billboard that displays “Call 800.555.4321”. Using the phone tracking software, you can determine which adverting method brings in more phone calls and allows you to continue or increase the amount of advertising in one source over another.
7. URL query/vanity tracking and tagging (Ideal for online transactions)
   Much like phone tracking, URL query or vanity tracking can provide evidence of sales origination in a digital medium.For example: Assume I have two digital ads. One ad on www.ABC.com and another on www.XYZ.com. I can have the link from the ad on www.ABC.com link with a customized URL similar to: www.ABC.com?utc=campaign1. Then, I can do the same thing from the other site, www.XYZ.com, with a customized URL similar to: www.ABC.com?utc=campaign2 . Then, we can use software to help evaluate what actions viewers took on my site based on which site they originated from – either www.ABC.com or www.XYZ.com. You can use Google Analytics to evaluate the data with this tracking method.

Tracking advertising is not always an exact science, but it can help you make better decisions to optimize your spend. There are many factors that come into play with data analysis that impact outcomes. Seasonality, uncontrollable external factors and data sampling size all contribute to the quality of the results. So, use this post as a guide to determine general effectiveness of your advertising. If you get to a point that you need more accurate results, you can always hire a professional.

Ranking on the first page for a targeted search phrase is wonderful, but that alone does not constitute a reason to celebrate. You still need to make sure your site is competitive in the search results. Too many times I have heard webmasters brag about a page one ranking in google, but what would impress me is to hear about the amazing amount of traffic their site receives because their site is so relevant to the searcher’s needs. Lessons from the marketing and advertising industry tell you that your site listing has to be more appealing than the competition, otherwise searchers will not waste the time to click on the listing for your site and choose a competitor. If your site is not receiving the click, then your CTR (click through rate) will suffer and will probably start to lose rankings too. However, there is no need to fear. You can increase your CTR if you spend a little bit of time and tailor your site description and title to attract the searcher.

Take a second and think about the searcher’s point of view. What would interest someone enough to click on your site? Is it your amazing product, your award winning service, excellent features or your cutting-edge information? No matter what your site offers, it is the attractive title and description that entices the searcher to click on your site. This is where selective SEO features (such as title tag and site description) come in handy to promote your site offers to searchers.

The Basics of SEO
If you are reading this post, you probably have already read a zillion articles about the fundamentals of SEO/ Search Engine Optimization. Basic SEO components are completely vital to success but primarily focus on the site ranking and not the CTR. Friendly URLs, Keyword density, sitemaps, bolded keywords and incoming links are great elements to ensure your site ranks for the targeted keywords – yet you must enhance your strategy just a bit more to make sure you are competitive in the page of search results. The title tag and site description play a significant role in SEO (especially the title tag), however you cannot forget to think about what happens after you start to get high rankings for targeted keyword phrases.

My Site Ranks in Google – Now What?

Above is an example listing for the keyword phrase “Omega Wire Gate Carabiner” in Google. As you can see from the graphic, the link (or title) provides an brief overview of the content for the page and maybe the site. The description provides more detail about what to expect if one were to click on the link. In the listing, the link is usually the page title in the code and the description is usually pulled from the description meta tag from the page code. When reviewing the page code, the words between the <title> and </title> is your page title and the words within the following tag is your description: <meta name=”description” content=”Description Here”>.

Above is a sample of several listings for the keyword phrase “Omega Wire Gate Carabiner” in Google. Comparing the listings, think about which listing looks the most appealing? All three listings offer the product that I am looking for, Omega Wire Gate Carabiner, but Altrec.com stands out a bit more because it lists features such as free shipping and 100% satisfaction while the other listings only provide information about the product. In this particular case, I know the product that I am looking for, I am just looking for the best deal. When it comes to decision time, I am going to click on the listing for Altrec.com because of the additional features. The site listing simply looks more appealing to me. With the short attention span of web users, if you do not grab the searcher’s attention immediately, you could possibly lose a visit or a conversion.

But I Cannot Create Appealing Copy
No worries. If copywriting is not your strength, then consider hiring a professional. There are many providers to choose from. I have used Watts Writing Studio – Professional Writing Services for many of my projects with great results. However, you should shop around and do your research to find the copywriting or branding company that best fits your needs.

Getting to Know Your Visitors
You must know what your converting visitors like. Testing is the best way to get to know your visitors and what persuades them to click. Using PPC (pay per click) advertising can provide simple testing environments for webmasters to test sales copy. The big three search engine ad platforms (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Bing/Live) all provide opportunities for all advertisers to test different ad copy.

Advertisers can test call-to-action phrases like “find out more” and “act today” and see what the viewers prefer. To investigate even further, advertisers can determine what words not only bring traffic but the words that help initiate conversions.

Content is King
Success comes down to the site that has the best content, appeal and reach (assuming there is demand) will prevail. Enhancing your page title and description for ranking pages, will increase your click through rate and ultimately your overall success.

Once you have the click, then your next challenge is to focus post click optimization. I will cover this topic in a later post.