Are Your Ads Effective? How Do You Know?
Everyone knows that advertising is essential, especially online. So you create ads and put them out there – and you may get some business from them, you may not, and you may get some activity but not the results you are looking for. How do you figure out what’s working and what’s not?
The key is split-testing. That is, you run one ad, which is called your control ad. Then you run another ad along with it that has a slight change in it. You compare the results from the 2 ads to discover which ad brings the best results. The ad with the best results then becomes your control ad. Then you repeat the process over and over, continually testing a new ad against your control ad. In this way your advertising continually becomes more and more effective, bringing you better and better results.
So what do you need to track?
You should be able to track the number of ad views, the number of click-throughs to your landing page, and the number of leads generated. From these you can calculate your click-through rate (CTR), and your lead conversion rate. If you are paying for your advertising, you will also need to track total value of sales, cost of ad campaign, cost per action, cost per sale, cost per click, and Return on Investment (ROI).
How to Track It
If you are using free advertising, a spreadsheet will work just fine to keep track of your statistics. If you are using paid advertising, then keeping track of the costs associated with your ads is essential. A great tool for keeping track of all of that is Hypertracker.com.
What’s important is that you find the method that works best for YOU! All your efforts will only be wasted if you don’t keep track, and then continually improve your ad campaigns.
Feel free to leave any questions, ideas, and feedback below. I love to hear what you have to say. If you found this post helpful, please share it with your Twitter and Facebook friends by clicking on the share buttons, or if you have other bookmark accounts, please click on the Bookmark and Share button. I deeply appreciate it!! Thanks so much for your time and attention!
To Your Success!
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Tagged with: ad campaign • click-through rate • cost per click • effective advertising • lead conversion • ROI • split-testing • statistics
Filed under: Getting Results • Marketing Tips
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I’m a new business owner, so I’m very interested in learning more about advertising nuts and bolts, especially FREE advertising. Currently I do not advertise anywhere, so I would love to find out where are the best places to advertise for my particular business — image consulting. I look forward to reading more articles about this. Thank you!
Linda
Hey Linda! Welcome to my webiste! I’ll have more posts in the future on free advertising. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter and you will get those posts delivered straight to your mailbox
There are lots of places where you can place free classifieds on the internet so that’s a good place to start. Then social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are great, too! Let me know how you are doing!
Lori,
You hit it right on the head with testing and for me i love to use tracking as well. Thanks for sharing and look forward to reading more of your blog and posts.
.-= Chris Bernardo´s last blog ..How Making a Video with Two Cute Dogs made Connections =-.
Thanks Lori
Am going to check out “hypertracker”. Great post. As my mentor Mark Hoverson states, amateurs ‘try’ and pros “track”. I look forward to your posts.
.-= Emma´s last blog ..*97%* Of People forget That You Need SEO Copy Writing…. =-.
Thanks so much Emma, I appreciate your comment! And yes, if you are serious about your business, you need to track!! I am glad you enjoyed my post!
Lori,
Totally agree. tracking and testing different things is the best way to actually KNOW if you have an effective campaign. This also goes for lead capture pages, offers and email copy..
Everything online can be tested.. which is great for us
thanks for this great post
talk soon
Hector
.-= Hector Cuevas´s last blog ..4 Ways To “Switch Up” Your Blog Content For More Return Readers =-.
Thanks so much, Hector! Indeed, everything needs to be tracked! Thanks for adding that in!
Lori
Lori, looks to me like you got it all covered: sweet and short and to the point, easy to understand and implement. I especially like the fact that you emphasized always having a control ad and changing the ad to be tested “one” (this is key) variable at a time. This appeals to me greatly since I have worked for many years in chemistry research labs and the way you described your ad experiment here, is exactly how we did our lab experiments as well.