Hey...where'd that lead come from?
He asked me what I meant. I said, Bob, you guys advertise all over the place. I see your ads on tv, and in the newspaper. I hear you on the radio all the time, and I've even received your direct mail coupons. So what's the source of all those phone calls you just received? Bob didn't have a clue.
I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but it wasn't. The fact of the matter is, businesses not knowing the origin of their advertising leads is all too common - both offline and online. And it's really inexcusable, because tracking your leads is one of the easiest and most critical aspects of your financial bottom line.
Why is tracking your advertising so important? Because if you don't track your advertising, how are you going to know with any degree of certainty which advertising methods are profitable and which one's are money pits? Don't you think it's important to know that?
For example, for each incoming call, Bob simply had to ask the caller, "How did you hear about us?" And then put "tv" or "dm" for direct mail, or whatever the advertising source was in the customer's file. And then reconcile the numbers weekly or monthly, or however often they chose to do it. It really is that simple.
Their success notwithstanding, can you imagine how much money they're literally flushing down the toilet, not knowing this information? But, you know what? Even if you aren't spending a dime on advertising, it's still possible to flush a bunch of money down the toilet, if you don't precisely track where your traffic is coming from.
For example, exactly what percentage of your traffic is coming from Google or Twitter? Exactly how many visitors did Bing or Yahoo send you? How about Facebook? And did any of that traffic actually convert? At what percentage? How many were repeat customers? And so on and so forth.
But if you aren't spending any money on traffic, how would you be flushing money down the toilet by not tracking that traffic? Because even with free traffic, some traffic sources are much more profitable than others. By tracking even your free traffic, you can isolate and analyze your traffic sources across the board for optimum results.
So what's the best way to track both your advertising and your traffic? Google Analytics is a fantastic tool - and it's free. And even though I haven't personally used it, I've heard nothing but good things about Hyper Tracker. But don't take that as an endorsement, because like I said, I haven't actually used it.
David Jackson
'Invictus' - William Ernest Henley
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Powerful, Free Marketing Tips to Help Grow Your Business!
http://www.free-marketing-tips-blog.com