Do You Know Where Your Advertising Budget Is?
I have noticed lately that even in our current bad economy, the money, time and effort being spent on Internet advertising in all of it’s forms has held pretty steady and even increased. Things like pay per click advertising and buying leads from third party providers can be cost effective compared to other mediums and may even work better, but they can also be pretty expensive.
The problem as I see it is how do you know? It’s true that the Internet companies that market their advertising can and should offer you tools to see just exactly what you are paying for and how it’s working. For example, Google offers some wonderful free tools for AdSense tracking and optimization. Some of the reports that I have seen from third party lead providers are pretty limited. What you usually get is just a quick overview. Sometimes you get some fancy charts and graphs and sometimes you get a guess at how well your leads are converting into sales.
The real beauty or Internet advertising is that it can and should be tracked. That is the main reason why it’s still going strong. I also think that’s why so many traditional marketers don’t like the Internet (or are afraid of it). If what you are doing is not producing results you’ll know it (or should know it). I’ve heard people who use newspaper, radio or TV say “Traffic is up so it must be working!”
- Yeah, but what exactly is working?
- Is something not working at all?
- Is something that I don’t know about causing it?
- How can you tell?
If you are spending money on any kind of Internet advertising you need to know exactly how well it’s working. No song and dance, not just an overview or guess, you need to know exactly what you’re spending and exactly what it’s bringing in. You also need to include the time that you or whoever you hire spend doing the analysis.
