Tracking Advertising Campaigns
Traditional advertising methods, such as television and print, have seen a sharp decline in recent years. A big part of this is due to the rise of Internet advertising, as well as other more efficient forms of direct marketing. As a consequence, many traditional media outlets are heading south faster than you can say ‘pay per click’. In the race to secure ad spend in the 21st century, the old school are losing badly. There is one key reason for this seismic shift in the advertising and marketing industries – the ability to track results.
Like no other form of marketing, email online marketing and SMS text message marketing each allow the advertiser to track results, as well as test different variables in each campaign. This helps them to determine the best campaign to be running, maximize the efficiency of each one, and make sure that not a single ad dollar is wasted. Business owners are gradually waking up to the importance of email and mobile marketing as one of the most effective ways to secure new business going forward, as well as ensuring that inefficiencies are cut down to a minimum.
When businesses opt to spend money on advertising in the local newspaper, they are taking a monumental risk. While certain campaigns may have proven to be effective in the past, there is never a guarantee that future performance will be as good. Additionally, the payment for the advertising space is due regardless of whether or not it provides a return on investment. This means that, when it comes to seeing a return from that advertising spend, in effect that businesses are paying their money and hoping for the best. What’s worse, even when the dust settles, there’s no real accurate way of determining how many of your prospects responded to a particular ad and how many came into your sales funnel via different avenues.
With email and mobile marketing, however, the situation is completely different. Not only can the return on marketing spend be tracked, but it is also intrinsically linked with performance. You can also see, in real-time, exactly who is responding to your ad, how they are responding, and exactly how effective a given campaign has been across the board. By changing one variable at a time, it’s also very easy to test the most responsive setup for your campaign, leaving you with a solution that is not just cost-effective, but also marketing effective.
Unlike traditional marketing channels, email and mobile marketing allow you to segment your demographic by actually requiring a positive action from the prospect to subscribe – whether that’s actually making a purchase in the first place or simply requesting further information. This means that not only is your email list more effectively tracked and tested, but also the effectiveness of your email online marketing is significantly boosted by the fact that prospects are already targeted in the first place. This can lead to improving conversions and campaign efficiency even further to provide a solid return on investment. As a result, traditional marketing channels are continuing to lose out as technology continues to provide better and more pragmatic solutions to the marketing question.
