Can you afford to waste 50% or more of your marketing budget? Most small businesses cannot, yet very few have a way of measuring if their marketing efforts are working. Saying things like: “Business picked up while we ran that campaign” can be self-defeating. Sales may have increased because of a change in the marketplace and have nothing to do with your marketing campaign. So, it is important to plan how you are going to measure any marketing efforts or advertising from the start. Think about how most of your leads or sales will come in. If most are online, that is easy to track. If the sale is generated in person or on the phone, this situation requires a little more planning. Is there a promotion you can tie into the campaign? That is one major benefit of coupons or free gifts. They allow you to track the source of the campaign that brought in the new customer. However you do it, plan to measure the results of any marketing efforts you undertake.
This is from a whitepaper I recently put together. You can get the full whitepaper here.