Best ways to track offline marketing sales for local businesses

There are many options to get started with tracking your affiliate offers. What kind of offers are you looking to promote?

its pretty simple really, you have to one way or another place some kind of tracking in place.

Before I get into that.. I will say this... with online efforts for offline business' you can use trackable phone numbers and the like. This is about as fool proof as this gets.

If your thinking is, you want to get paid by the lead for offline business' I would suggest otherwise. It just ends up a pain in the tail end. there are simply to many ways for the client to say, oh that did not convert or what have you.. and the reality is, they WILL do this. Its like human nature or something.

Devise a pay for service rendered model vs a performance based model, and in the end, you and your client will be happier.

OFFLINE methods of tracking...

1) call (XXX) XXX-XXXX extension 123 - the extension is letting them know your efforts referred the call.

2) Call (XXX) XXX-XXXX and ask for Lisa - the name will let them know this is a referral from your efforts

3) For printed materials use a printed coupon - the same can be done for online efforts - print out this coupon

4) a simple tell them Savidge4 sent you can be effective.. not 100% that is for sure but depending on the nature of the referal, it does work

5) If you happen to be the one that gets your client a Google my Business account set up, there are all kinds of tracking methods in this, from calls to directions etc etc

6) Printed material with a free gift offer free pressing with laundry order or free consultation or regular rate after hours visit or a toaster.

7) Using Facebook to Geo Target and offer limited time offers.

8) Show a local ID

9) A digital coupon they can display from thier phone

10) a secret password. I have been using this one as of late, tell the cashier "senior 55" at time of checkout

11) secret phrase.. kinda old time spy movie stuff.. the customer asks a question.. "I heard sally likes the sea shore." the cashier will respond "and frank likes fritters" That was a kind of fun one to watch play out LOL


Those are the most common ones I can think that we use.. well most of them are common.

Hope that helps!

I track my sales through windows contacts. I use folders to separate one time clients from repeat clients.

Here's another thought. Create an opt-in for offers. Use a poll with the the opt-in such as... What offer/s would YOU most like to see with options being products that your clients are offering. That would certainly be somewhat trackable. The other option would be to get them to pay you upfront on a subscription basis with a discount if they wanted to pay a year in advance.

I think if you want to get the customers through very low spending, I should advise you go for stress level advertising beside all other online marketing options.

FaceBook ads are not usually sold on a "per sale" basis . . . the client (the business you are doing the ads for) would usually pay the ad spend, plus a management fee of $500 to $1,000 per month. So how many sales they get out of the leads is not relevant to you.

Chris