How to measure ROI for an offline client?

This is a tricky one because you have a client using AdWords online to get people to come into his business offline.

There's one thing that comes to mind to help measure the campaign:

Obviously, if a person clicks on one of those AdWords ads, they're taken somewhere.

Depending on what kind of business your client has (you mentioned a show room so maybe cars? furniture? who knows...), why not have a printable coupon or something for a % off the product or a coupon for a free "gift" if they show up to the show room?

So if your client's goal is to see how many people are showing up to the show room because of his/her AdWords campaign, having those people show up with SOMETHING they printed off the ad might be a way to "measure" what kind of business your client is generating from the online campaign...

The client comes in, passes off the coupon (or whatever paper you agree on) and your client tosses the coupon into a pile somewhere. At the end of the day, week, month, goes back and counts off the coupons and see the number of persons that came in. Maybe some added stats indicating how many of those who showed up with the coupon stayed and actually made a purchase.

With that information, it might then be easier for you (and your client) to run the numbers and see if his/her $100/day campaign is paying off or not.

On the landing page for the Adwords campaign, explain that if they mention a certain code ("Tell them Danny sent you" or "Quote offer #21-B") they'll get a free gift. Maybe have a monthly draw just for people who arrive this way. Make the carrot big enough that they'll remember to say it. Track.

Or you could do some math. Seasonality will definitely play into it. But what was their average monthly client count prior to the campaign? Compare totals. Restaurants know that on this day, the customer count will be similar if not virtually identical to last year's. And if they have several years' records, they can get a nice average for comparison. Same with foot traffic for your client.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I've also just thought of simply tracking URL visits to their About and Contact pages.

Still interested in any other further opinions, cheers.

The coupon sounds like the best idea. Offer them something.
Tracking the hits of the contact page doesn't work half the time. I tried that as well

Ditto on the printable coupon, etc.

For one of my businesses, in order to add a new client to the database it is mandatory that I (or my assistant) has to select the source of the new client from a dropdown list. In other words, we know where ALL of our clients originally come from.

That's just a good business practice to get in place.

Just a thought but if I remember right you can set adwords to display on specific devices like iphones. Maybe say something in the ad like "Show us your iphone - Get Free Gift". That way you have people that are currently mobile and may want to show you their cool iphone at the location.

You might be able to work a cross deal. Show us you iphone, get a free pizza coupon. Pick it up here. Can get these coupons from other businesses needing clients (usually restaurants). That way, its free to your client and you may even be able to sell the restaurant some mobile PPC or SMS services as well.

Thank you all again!

The simple idea of asking all new customers how they found out about the business is perfect, and obvious, but I had not thought of so thanks!

The coupon idea is good also, but it is a furniture manufacturer and importer, so mostly bigger ticket items. I could see the coupon idea being perfect for a smaller retail or food business, but am struggling to think of a good way to implement it ($20 off a $800 couch is not going to work!).

To me this is no different than tracking any other "advertising" or promotional costs for a business.

Even before the internet was around, I did this.

I would graph statistics of things like when any ad campaign of anything started and another graph of how many people came in, another graph of how many people did the next step (if there is one in this business) and then how many sales.

After a while, you will see not only what ad types and campaigns work by the number of people in and sales but you will see what it takes to make a sale, then I would always reverse it once I knew the percentages to see what I had to do to make X amount of money.

I still do this today for my online business, I just have better more precise stats but it works the same the other way.

Like I said, once I knew the percentages, I would reverse. Back then, I had identified, after trial and error, that a certain mailer and a certain business newspaper paid article ad got me the most prospects in the doors. By graphing, as I stated above, I found out that whenever I sent out about 100 mailers a week, I got 10 people in and 1 sale. If I added the paid newspaper ad with the mailers, I got 15-20 people on and 3 sales.

So then I figured how much money I wanted to make divided that by price of average sale to get number of people I needed to buy and then multiplied that by the number of mailers I needed to get one sale and that is what I mailed out after that. If I ever wanted to increase income, I sent out more mailers and placed more ads.

However, this all works ONLY after you have determined what advertising methods work for you on a consistent basis.