AD Tracking The Overlooked
Key To Your Success
2008-02-09 12:39:55
Though often misunderstood, ad tracking is at its core a
process for simply counting how many people respond to a particular
advertisement. Typically this tracking is usually done by
tracking the number of clicks or visitor actions.
Using ad tracking (also known as analytics) on your own site
can be done using via Active Server Pages (ASP), Common Gateway
Interface (CGI) or Personal Home Page (PHP) script - or can
be done through a third party ad tracking service provider,
also known as remotely hosted servers or through a combination
of these. Software of this type ranges from free – as
in the case of Google Analytics (at the time of this publication)
to twenty five thousand dollars a month for the very high
end tracking solutions.
Ad tracking platforms & software vary but all monitor
the traffic coming onto your site and the results or goals
achieved from this traffic, and can mean the difference between
making little to no money on your site, and making a killing.
Ad analytics tracking software relate traffic directly to
marketing activities and then translate those activities into
measured results, giving you the ability to calculate a return
on your advertising dollars spent. Ad tracking also monitors
the clicks that you receive for all your advertizing campaigns,
such as e-mail marketing, banner ads, affiliate programs,
classified advertising, bulletin board, e-zine advertising,
forum, links on other websites, pay-per-click ads, among others.
Some tracking software also offers integration into legacy
systems, sales management, customer profiling, and scheduling.
With most service providers and software.
It is possible to set up an unlimited number of tracking
links or URLs in advertisements, such as on a web page, in
an email, a pay per click ad, etc. Ad tracking helps save
time and maximize results from your marketing expenditure
by giving you access to the following information:
• Number of visits generated by each of your ads
• Number of unique visits generated by all of your ads
• Which ads generate the most visits and the most sales
• Number of sales (or other actions) generated by each
ad
• Cost-per-click, cost-per-sale and click-to-sale ratios
for each ad
• Return on investment for each ad, so as to know which
are profitable
• Organization of the important details about your ad
campaigns Overall, ad tracking is an invaluable tool in understanding
the response to any promotions you run in your messages or
in your website.
But the real hidden advantage of ad tracking is targeted
conversion improvement. Lot's of businesses just don't get
this but if they did, their profits would skyrocket! For example
let's say that your testing indicates that you are running
three news letter ads, in three different newsletters.
If you are tracking your sales, and where they came from
you would have no way of knowing which of these newsletters
pulled better for you and so you'd just keep paying to run
your add in all three.
However, if you track the sales, you might find that newsletter
#1 generated ten sales, newsletter # 2 zero sales, and newsletter
# 3, one sale.
Now if you made a profit of $50 per sale and each newsletter
ad cost $50.00, you're your ad newsletter #1 made you $500,
your ad in newsletter #2 COST you money, and newsletter #3
you broke even on. With this information you can quickly see
where your ad is working and where it's not.
Using the example above you would be better served by taking
the money you spent on newsletter # 2 and advertising elsewhere.
Ad tracking gives you the power to know where your advertising
is working, where you are making money and where it's being
wasted.
This allows you to focus your advertising budget on only
the ad sources that are profitable. Here are some of the better
tracking solutions on the market. The depth of features offered
varies by price, but all will allow you to track your ads
and make more money.
http://analytics.google.com http://www.clicktracks.com http://www.onestat.com/
http://www.1automationwiz.com/split-testing-software.htm http://www.webtrends.com
The bottom line is that if you are not testing and more importantly,
tracking your advertising results, you could be leaving money
on the table. Worse yet, you could be losing money. The take
away here is do not even consider spending a dime on advertising
until you have a tracking mechanism in place.
Follow Up Marketing
is Better than Advertising
2008-12-20 12:03:33
Have you ever heard the saying, "I know that I waste
half of my advertising budget? The problem is I don't know
which half!" It is this very philosophy that is prompting
me to strongly inform you... advertising doesn't work!
Let me show you why: There is no way to track effectiveness
(or ineffectiveness)
It's impersonal
The target audience is too large
It's costly to redo or improve
There is no call to action
What surprises me is the number of small business owners
that save their marketing dollars just to waste them on ineffective
advertising. Then, they complain because nothing is working
and they don't have any customers.
I know what you're thinking, "Isn't advertising and
marketing the same thing?" Well, not really.
Let me explain the differences.
Advertising includes: commercials, billboards, radio, and
newspapers.
Marketing includes: emails, letters, postcards, and fax.
So how is follow-up marketing better than advertising?
You can track response rates
You can quickly change campaigns that aren't working
You can specifically target your audience
It leads prospects to an immediate sell
If you really want to attract more customers, you will learn
to market and leave the advertising to those gazillion dollar
companies.
Questions to
know about your customers
2008-02-11 14:45:50
I have talked about how important it is to know your customers
to make an impact on sales. Its always easy to say something
that is nearly impossible to do, but nothing is impossible,
there is a solution of every problem hidden around us, we
simply can’t see that…
Today I am going to write down some very important questions
which you must know to thoroughly understand your customers.
They are the reason of your business, if you can’t satisfy
them you are not going to stay strongly to your feets…
Again mind you.. Its your customer support department who
should be well trained to treat your customers, make the purchase
a true memorable experience, keep important data, provide
a healthy environment and at last answer these questions
Q1 - Are they male or female?
Q2 - What socio-economic or ethnic group do they belong?
Q3 - What levels of education have they completed?
Q4 - What is their marital status?
Q5 - Do they have children?
Q6 - What age group?
Q7 - What is their religious preference?
Q8 - What are their lifestyle preferences?
Q9 - What kind of hobbies do they have?
Q10 - How do they spend their free time?
Q11 - Do they tend to be conservative or liberal in their
lifestyle and political beliefs?.
Q12 - Are they generally introverted or extroverted?
Q13 - How much do they make in a year?
Q14 - Can they easily afford your product or service?
Q15 - On what do they regularly spend money?
Q16 - What types of occupations do they hold?
Q17 - Are they part of a particular industry or profession?
Q18 - To what groups and associations (real and virtual, personal
and professional) do they belong?
Q19 - Is there a list of them that might exist somewhere?
Q20 - What are their beliefs?
Q21 - What values do they hold dear?
Q22 - What is important to them in their life and work?
Q23 - Where do they hang out in real time -- at church, the
local coffee shop, the hardware store, civic groups or professional
association meetings?
Q24 - What about online in discussion groups, blogs, forums,
online networking sites?
Q25 - Do they attend conferences or trade shows regularly?
Q26 - Can you open the yellow pages of your phone book and
find several listings that would encompass your target market?
Q27 - What magazines, newspapers, email newsletters, blogs,
and professional trade publications
Q28 - do they read?
Q29 - What television programs do they regularly watch?
Q30 - What kind of movies do they see?
Q31 - What kind of online videos do they view?
Q32 - With whom do they do business on a regular basis?
Q33 - Where do they network online and offline?
Q34 - Who are their "natural referral partners",
or other businesses who cater to the same target market but
offer a different service?
Q35 - Whom do they trust and respect?
Q36 - How do they prefer to interact -- in person, by email,
by webconferencing?
Q37 - Are there buzzwords or industry-specific terms that
they use frequently?
Q38 - What gets their attention?
Q39 - What are the key issues/problems/concerns keeping them
awake at night? Are they in enough pain that they're willing
to pay you to solve their problem?
Q40 - Where are they seeking assistance to help solve the
problem?
Q41 - What kinds of products and services might they purchase
to help solve this problem – books, magazines, coaching,
consulting, etc.?
Well, these questions look too much at first glance, even
sometimes we don’t know this much about ourselves…
:) In the end, answer of these questions can carry your business
strategies, planning, decisions to the right direction.
Share it Either
it’s yours or else
2008-05-14 12:03:14
We as a human beings came in this beautiful, full of knowledge
and changing world. The creator has assigned us some jobs
to do; there must be some huge reason to create us. Mostly,
we don’t know those reasons and we stick to keep our
life on a track which is full of reasons but not that for
which we were created. These reasons are different, our own
reasons to spend life prosperously.
Today, I wanted to clear some important issues for my readers.
We came in this world as a child and a child know nothing.
He/She is taught and trained by his parents, friends, family,
relatives, experiences, good things, bad things. Whatever,
he learns is not his own created or inventions. There have
been thousands of years when world was created and thousands
of generations have set some standards.
Whatever, we learn today is not necessarily learn by our
own experience. There are still 90% of things which has already
happened before us. If we learn something and not pass it
or share it we do badly.
Sharing and helping others with what you have known to be
important is always a good step. Same applies for each and
every industry including SEO, internet marketing.
I write here, but I am nothing more than a good observer.
To be very honest, I learn 98% from other resources and sometimes
when I have no time, I prefer to pass the juice to my readers.
There was an article which I read sometimes earlier, save
it to my favorites. It was a really good one. I simply copy
it and pasted over here. Amazingly, as this concept has been
very common to trust the information I received a very special
comment from a very renowned personality.
“You better higher a good copy writer”
Well, I want to tell you guys… We are supposed to share
good information and it’s not necessary that information
should come directly from you. When we quote “Quranic
Ayats” we simply quote them, when we quote “Hadiths”
we simply quote them. Why? It’s for sake of others,
for sake of humanity, and for sake of Islam.
Similarly, its no matter the information is real or not,
its not matter from where the information was grasped, its
no matter who is speaker and author, eventually we should
stick to the purpose of sharing any particular information
in the community.
There is always a message in writing, not considering the
message and keeping the mind here and there is only the part
of “Shaitan”. Now, this can reflect differently
on each of yours mind… I have nothing to being in this
mood but this is always important to correct the thoughts.
Keep good thoughts and keep sharing knowledge… Its
all about internet and Web 2.0!
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