to implement on the net. Place the same ad on multiple websites, or the same ad on multiple different pages of the same site. Or, place different versions of the same ad on a particular website and see how the response compares. Also, be sure to consider the TYPE of response you get from each ad. Don't just look at how many calls or emails you received from a particular ad, determine how many of those calls resulted in a sale (or a new dealer sign-up). Ultimately, that's all that counts, really. If you only received 10 calls from an ad, but 8 of those calls resulted in order, that would be a much better result than to have received 20 calls, but only 5 orders or sign-ups (unless those orders happened to be MUCH bigger than those from another ad - which is also important to consider. So, How Do You Track Your Advertising? The answer to that question depends upon how/where you're advertising. If your advertisements are run offline (not on the Internet), you're tracking method might be a little different than from an ad run on a website. If you put a phone number in the advertisement, then you might want to consider setting up 2 or 3 different toll free numbers to route the calls through. Point them all at the same destination phone number. In other words, in the end, people calling any of the 3 toll free numbers will end up ringing in to the same phone number. BUT, the company that hosts your toll free numbers will show you on your month-end bill which calls came through which toll free numbers. If more calls came in to toll free #2 (and that number was used for NOTHING but your ad), then you know that ad produced the most response (although not necessarily the most orders or sign-ups). Of course, once a customer has that number from your ad, they are likely to use it the next time they call you, so the waters could get a little muddied, if you start getting follow-up calls through the same numbers that you're tracking for your ads. You could also set up a single toll free number that asks the caller to enter the number that was listed in the ad (for instance, your ad might say something like, "enter reference code 28 when you call"). Upon entering the number, they are provided with a recorded message or are immediately transferred to your business line for you to speak with them. Each different reference code could either get the same or a different message. Regardless, the company that hosts the toll free number would keep a record of the key-presses so that you could see which ones were entered the most, giving you an impression of which ad performed best. Of course, as I mentioned before, it's not necessarily about how many calls, but how many sales/sign-ups, so you might want to take your tracking a step further than that, but I think you get the idea. If you put a website address in your offline ad, then you could use a different address for each ad. For instance, www.LarrysBestWidgets.com/ad1/, www.LarrysBestWidgets.com/ad2/, www.LarrysBestWidgets.com/ad3/, and so on. Or, alternatively, ad1.LarrysBestWidgets.com, ad2.LarrysBestWidgets.com, ad3.LarrysBestWidgets.com ..... Your website statistics would show how many times people came through each address. They can all be directed to the same page on your website or to different pages, depending upon how different the initial advertisements might be.
57