Tracking the effectiveness of magazine ads for your web site...

In a post below it was mentioned how it can be a good idea to advertise your web site in a printed ad (in a magazine or newspaper, etc.).

However, one of the important keys to effective advertising is being able to TRACK the effectiveness of your ads...

When orders are sent through the mail, tracking is easy. Simply create fictitious "Department" names within the mailing address for ads in different publications . Then, by which "Department" the order is sent to, you know which ad it came from.

Even with phone orders, it is a simple matter for the phone operator to ask where the person ordering saw the ad....

However, with ads in magazines promoting web sites, what is the best way to "track" which ads the click-throughs came from?

The way which comes to my mind is to have different web pages for each ad...

For example, in one magazine you could advertise www.doodadwebsite.com/doodad1 , whereas in another magazine the advertised site could be www.doodadwebsite.com/doodad2 . These could both go to identical web pages, however by which page an order comes from, you could track which magazine ads are pulling the best.

Anyhow, does anyone know of other ways you can use to track orders from ads in multiple magazines, where the ad sends the reader to a web site?

Thanks... (Hope the question was clear).

Dien Rice

Here's one way, a bit kludge-y but it works. If you have a way to log traffic (often included with your website hosting package), then you have a primitive way to track responses. Simply add a tracking code to the URL you use in each ad or promotion. The tracking code is a slash and a question mark, followed by whatever code you want to use. It looks like this (only without quotation marks): "www.yourwebsite.com/?ad1." Use a different code for each ad or promotion. You’ll find the results in your log files. Important: don’t confuse traffic with sales.




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> Important: don’t confuse traffic with
> sales.

Agreed. The traffic you get from the ad is not so much as important as the sales generated. One way of tracking sales is by having a unique "promotion code" or "coupon code" that they need to type in when they make the purchase.

Dien - a thought - how about using sub-domains for each magazine.

cosmo.website.com
harpers.website.com

etc.

and then redirect from the sub-domain to the main domain. Most web hosts these days give you the option to set things up like that.

Cheers
Maggie


Sub-domains an option!

Maggie,

I agree that this is a good option. Tests we've done have shown that running offline ads with URL's such as domain.com/1, domain.com/2, etc. can be dangerous, as lots of people will either just enter in the root domain, or end up going to the root to see what's on the home page.

If you *must* use these types of extensions for some reason, the best way I've found to deflect this from happening is to use something like domain.com/special or domain.com/private, which suggests that they have to go to that page to get something exclusive. But even this is not an optimal approach, as people will still often want to see what's on the home page. And if they find that it's the same as the "special" page, they may not appreciate it.

Maggie, your idea of sub-domains is a pretty solid approach and will probably work fairly well for tracking traffic from offline ads, but not necessarily sales, as people once again will often click over to the home page or other pages on the site. And unless you have a very sophisticated tracking system, you may not be able to trace the sales back to the original visit to abc.domain.com, xyz.domain.com, etc.

Truly, if you're serious about tracking your marketing, I would suggest simply investing in several different domains that you use solely for individual ad campaigns. Domains are so cheap these days, and most anyone who has the budget to advertise offline can also afford to invest in a few additional domains.

It all depends on what scale and with what mindset you are operating...

Best,

Jesse

> Dien - a thought - how about using
> sub-domains for each magazine.

> cosmo.website.com
> harpers.website.com

> etc.

> and then redirect from the sub-domain to the
> main domain. Most web hosts these days give
> you the option to set things up like that.

> Cheers
> Maggie

Hi, Jesse - < G > I like the idea of additional domains for another reason - adding in relevant keywords in the new domain name :-)) which would enhance search engine optimisation for your existing site and the new one ....

Of course, you could (and probably should!) do this with the sub-domains too, rather than using the publication name (which obviously raises trademark and copyright issues).

Interesting thought!
Cheers
Maggie


Use keywords in directories/sub-domains!

Hi Dien,

I think I maybe the one that posted about having success with offline ads.

I track these ads very carefully using a very simple system. (it sounds far more complicated to explain it than to do it.)

I always keep 2 things in mind for offline adds when creating a url.

1) keep the url short and easy to type
2) don't make it obvious that I'm tracking ads

I'd rather not set up a different web page sales letter for each ad because if you change one of them you have to remember to change them all if you want to be consistent.

What I do is a variation of what your idea.

Say your main domain is pethouses.com and your ad offers a free report.

I set up a separate subaccount in my main domain for each magazine.

If I'm advertising in "Dog World" magazine I might name a subdirectory /dogs or /dogreport. That's appropriate, short and not obvious that I'm tracking ads.

(I'd rather they didn't have to type .htm or .html to a separate page because it's just another place for them to mistype.)

Then I put an webpage in each directory called index.htm that redirects them to my main webpage but through an ad tracking service like Adminder.

When someone from an offline ad types in
htttp://pethouses.com/dog

it redirects to my main sales webpage and goes through Adminder which tracks the clicks and any sales it generates. (they don't have to type index.htm or index.html)

One very important thing to remember that no matter how simple you make your URL in the ad people will still type it wrong. Be sure to set it up so that if they get your main domain correctly (ex. http://pethouses.com) but they type the extension wrong (http://pethouses.com/dogrport) they are redirected to your main sales page and not the page that says "page not found." Ask your webmaster if you don't know how to do this.

I learned this the hard way when I forgot to set up subdirectory for an ad I placed until 2 weeks after an ad came out. For 2 weeks everyone who typed in the URL in the ad got "page not found." Experienced computers found the main page but many others didn't.

Ouch!

Now I don't have to worry about forgetting.

Ron




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