This is my 200th post! Let’s celebrate with a guest post from Susan Prince, otherwise known as @CadenceMarket. A couple of weeks ago I did two posts on tracking ROI from social media and other networking. Susan has done a follow up post for us on tracking the ROI from other forms of marketing. Take it from here, Susan!

Continuing the idea of tracking your marketing efforts, you should now be in the habit of asking how and where people learned about your business.

Sometimes this can be tricky as people may not always remember exactly where they heard about you. Good marketing always has some form of brand awareness which is geared towards building familiarity with your business. And while it’s nice that people remember you from your advertising, sponsorship or PR activities, it is also important to have some portion of your marketing budget dedicated to activities that can be more easily tracked. Not only that, but it’s very gratifying to see your marketing dollars produce actual sales. It reaffirms the idea that marketing does work!

Depending on your objectives, there are a variety of tactics you can employ that generate trackable results. For example, if you’re interested in building your email list, you may offer a free white paper or some other valuable information on your website that requires an email address. Of course most people are interested in increasing their sales – so tactics that drive customers to their store or website are particularly valuable.

So what types of tactics can you employ that generate trackable results?

Postcards
Coupons
Email offers
Internet ads
Advertising with a specific call to action

All of these tactics require that customer to either physically present something, mention a specific code or visit a unique url to receive the promotion.

The beauty of these types of promotions is that they can have an immediate impact on business. Personally, I love postcards. They are relatively inexpensive and really stand out in this day and age where most people’s email inboxes are overloaded with promotions. By mailing out a postcard with a specific promotion (i.e., bring in this card to receive a 20% discount off your order), you will know exactly who responded to the mailing because they need to bring the card in to redeem the discount.

And while it is difficult to generate a huge response from email, it’s infinitely trackable. You can see exactly who opened your email, who clicked on the links, who forwarded it to their friends and who decided they don’t want to hear from you anymore.

Internet ads also don’t typically generate lots of response, but like email promotions, they are relatively inexpensive and again easy to track.

Regardless of which method you decide to employ, you can count on high degree of satisfaction by seeing exactly what’s working and what’s not.

Thank you, Susan. All those forms of marketing are not areas in which I work with clients. So if you are interested in learning more, stop by Susan’s website for more information