So You've Just Invested in An Advertising Program... - written by Darren Rabie

So you've just invested in an advertising program for the year and you want to know …"what's your return on this investment?".

If this hasn't happened to you - stop reading - you are one of the lucky few. If not, you are like the rest of us.

Most organizations I talk to look at the quantity of leads they get as a key measure of the success of that marketing initiative & while there is truth in the "numbers game" (generate a lot and something is gonna stick), relying solely on that one perspective can potentially lead you down the wrong road.

Let's take magazine advertising. There is no debate that reader service cards, bingo cards and lead sheets are a thing of the past (in fact many publications have completely done away with them). But that does not mean they don't generate business opportunities for your organization. You are just looking in the wrong place.

Where should you look? The answer lies in 3 areas - phone calls; fax and most importantly website activity. So now, the questions are different. When you run advertisements, do you see a spike in your website traffic, requests for literatures, phone calls, etc…If you do, you need to ask yourself…."what is causing this lift in inquiries?

Website hits are a perfect example. When I talk to companies and ask them to list their most productive lead generation sources, I invariably hear their website being listed in the top. However, unless you have a well-established brand like Coke or IBM, you have to wonder where are people getting your website address from, not to mention the motivation to visit it? The options are simple - a. search engines; b. your literature (business cards; brochures; etc…); c. referrals; & d. your advertising.

So what now?

1. change your view of your website, phone calls & faxes - they are not lead sources but merely methods in which people communicate their interest to you. Unless you drive people to your website somehow, it's no different than a pretty brochure sitting in your desk drawer that nobody ever reads.

2. Give credibility where it's due. Find out what drove people to your website or to contact you. If, once they get to you, you are able to show your difference vs, the competition, then finding out which initiatives brought them to you can make all the difference in attracting new business.

3. Set up the proper tracking methods. There are numerous ways to evaluate what is driving your traffic. Here are a few…

a. Train those who answer the inquiry line to ask prospects where they found your phone number. Have a field in your corporate database for them to populate the answer;

b. Have a similar question on your "contact us" or "literature request" section of your website. Make sure though that you make it easy to use by putting a drop down field that features the names of your different events and initiatives.

c. Survey your customers to get a feel for what magazines the read, trade shows they visit, search engines they use, etc…
d. Have a counter on your website to monitor traffic. Even if you don't know who visited, a visible increase in traffic after a advertisement hits certainly tells you something.

The branding debate. Wow… this is a tough one. From my perspective, advertising creates branding. This branding should drive 2 results - a perception in the marketplace of who you are (quality, price, reliability, service, convenience, etc….); & a motivation of action - in the form of inquiries and web traffic (Coke expects to see an increase in sales when they sponsor the Olympics). It's tougher in today's economy to invest in something, measure nothing and justify it as solely to "build the company's name".

So let's wrap this up into a few quick reference points.

- Magazine Advertising DO generate real business opportunities but disguise themselves as phone calls, faxes and web activity.

- Branding should create a "corporate image" but should also be expected to earn it's keep by showing real results.

- The only way you will ever tie results to magazines is by better utilizing your staff and your website to properly understand what & how people are being driven to you.

Good luck and good business.