Tracking Your Customers
Do you know where your customers come from and how they find you? Here is how to learn.
It is a well-known truism that 80% of marketing and advertising is worthless. Of course, the question is, “Which 80%?” The more you know about where your customers are coming from, the better use you can make of your marketing budget.
Direct marketers have long used keying to track which advertising is most effective. This can be done any of several ways. If customer responses will come over the phone, each ad would tell them to ask for a specific extension number or name. Mailed responses might include a department or box number. When you receive an order addressed to “Dept. AG-904,” that tells you they responded to your ad in the September issue of a particular magazine.
This type of tracking is also useful when seeking publicity. You won’t always know when your story is picked up by the media. Sometimes the first notice you get is when orders and inquiries start coming in with the tracking numbers you assigned to the press releases.
Coupons are another tracking mechanism. If you have coupons running in packages sent by direct mail, as well as coupons in your ads in newspapers and magazines, you can see which ads brought in the most customers. You might even want to track how much each customer spent, so you can see how much revenue was generated from each ad. After all, an ad that brings in 20 customers who each spend $50 is more valuable than one that brings in 40 customers who each spend $10.
You can also track online results. The stats package on your web site can tell you what web pages are referring customers to you. One day when I was being bombarded with orders, I learned that an article in which I was quoted was featured on the home page of MSN.com. If I hadn’t been able to check my web stats, I might not have known how all these new customers found me. Ask your web master or web hosting company what stats are available. Google Analytics is a free service that provides many types of detailed reports.
Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of simply asking customers, “Where did you hear about us?” Although they sometimes won’t recall, they usually will. Keep a log near the phone or cash register to track responses.
Once you know what works, do more of it. And, do less of what doesn’t work. As you change your marketing mix, watch for unexpected changes in results. It may be that although a particular ad or promotion didn’t appear to do well, it was giving your company a lot of visibility leading indirectly to more business. A publisher told me that although ads in trade magazines didn’t sell a lot of books for him directly, the ads made it more likely that buyers would seek out his books at their local bookstores and on Amazon.com. You may discover something similar.
Tracking your results to specific marketing campaigns can help you spend your marketing dollars in the most effective ways.
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