Ad Tracking Tools

It’s now 2011 and the good news is, “How did you hear about us?” isn’t the only tool you have to track your advertising anymore.  Here are a few free and paid tools I recommend using to keep track of your advertising efforts….

——————————————- FREE ———————————————–

Google Analtyics
Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

With Google Analtyics you can see:

  • Referral Links:  See websites that have delivered inbound links to your website
  • Search Engines:  See what people are “googling” when they find you via search engines
  • Direct:  See how many people ended up on your website by typing in you web address directly.  This is a great way of seeing when people typed in a custom URL (be sure to set up tracking on that URL though).

Sign up for Google Analytics

Google Alerts
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Enter the topic you wish to monitor, then click preview to see the type of results you’ll receive.

Sign up for Google Alerts

Custom Urls
You’re going to need to work with you web guy for this one, but basically, take your website www.mybusinessname.com and create a custom URL like www.mybusinessname.com/brides that is unique to each advertising campaign you do.

Custom Contact Form on your Website
Instead of just having a text field for “how did you hear about us?” Use a check box system where new clients can check all the places they may have seen your business.  List all the places you are advertising, have advertised and even editorial.

——————————————- PAID ———————————————–

Phone Call Tracking Services
These services give you a custom phone number to be in different ad campaigns and then when a client calls that number, it helps you to directly relate that call to that ad campaign.  It doesn’t stop there though, they then record the call to help you make sure your sales staff is providing the utmost customer service too.

Recommended Companies:

Remember, it’s likely a client may see your ad and either call you, directly type your website address into the URL box, Google your business name and click on a link to your website from another website.  Tracking only one method isn’t going to give you clear results.  Keeping track of all these methods will give you a better idea of how your marketing initiatives are working for you.  After all, they all work together.