Demand Proof That Your Advertising Works: Tracking Ads

by James Fowler

www.mywebsource1.com

How do you know if your ads are working for you? The internet makes it easy to track your return on investment through pay-per-click ads, but how can you track print ads? How do you monitor your radio and television ads? What do you do if your running concurrent campaigns?

One way marketers have done this in the past is to put a special code on the ad that a customer is supposed to use when they call the company in hopes of getting an additional discount.

For example, if you were running an ad for a Halloween Sale, you might have customers call in and say the code: BOO to receive an additional 10% off their order.

While this may prove some sales, how do you know your ad worked? You know which customers got the discount, but did they call in and have your customer service person offer them the 10% off? What about the customers that didn’t use the code? How about those that saved the ad and called in after the sale? This way cannot positively give you an accurate account.

Another way of tracking ads is the coupon. Likewise, while you know the number of people who have used the coupon saw your ad, what about those who buy your products but didn’t use the coupon? What if they buy something else outside of the sale item? There is no clear way to monitor the effectiveness of your ad…

…or is there?

Let us say you are going to do a direct mail campaign or rent a billboard. You want to know how effective your money is working for you. There is a way to do this by tracking the phone numbers and/or web address that you use in your ads. What’s more, your ad can be monitored each day for its effectiveness. The difficult work is done for you and you just need to worry about getting the sales!

Once you experience the power of the tracking technology by seeing the actual number of leads and hearing the actual phone calls, you will be able to track where you are most effective. You’ll be able to see and hear where your shortcomings are. You’ll be able to see what brings in results.

Why waste money on non-effective advertising month after month? Quit the guessing. Be smart in your spending. Arm yourself with the tools you need to make your advertising as valuable as possible. Think of how much money you can save by spending smart!

Here’s how it works:
ONE: You create a magazine, billboard, catalog, brochure, radio, or television ad. We take your phone number or email address and change it slightly to record the results back to you.

TWO: Immediately, those calls or the web site address comes to you, but are recorded so that you can monitor their results.

THREE: You click on the web site each day and can actually listen to the phone calls or see the results of the web site address provided.

You can see exactly who is answering the call to action from your ads!

I am sure that you can see the benefit in this method of advertising. The added cost (which is most likely less than 10% of your total cost of one mailing) can help you in honing your message and give you the answers to how well your advertising is working for you!

Contact us with your questions and find out how Smart Marketing with myWebSource1 can work for you and get a sample image of how this wonderful software works!

The Most Powerful Ten-Year Old on the Planet

by James Fowler
http://www.mywebsource1.com/

No, it isn’t Superboy. It is the mega-powerful Google, which started just ten years ago Sunday, September 07. Google has been such a daily part of our lives, it is hard to imagine that it is only ten years old. Google was created between 1996-1998 by two Stanford students who hypothesized that a search engine that analyzes the relationships between websites would produce better results. Thus, sites with the most links to them from other relevant web pages appear higher on a search results list. Google use is so prevalent that the verb "google" was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance. This same system is now used by most search engines today.

The company was originally started at Stanford University, but then later moved to a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California. From there, they moved to their current headquarters in Palo Alto, California. It was originally funded with a $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems.

Where did the founders come up with the name Google?

It comes from the word Googol, which means 10¹⁰⁰ (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Likewise, the name Googleplex, the name of the company's property, comes from Googolplex or 1 followed by a googol of zeros.

In the late 1990's and early 2000's, Google captured the attention of many internet users because of its clean look and consistancy, plus the way it placed a web page higher up on the search list based upon the achievements of the web designers. To this day, we only have clues to making your web site rank higher in this search engine - Google keeps the exact formula a closely-guarded secret.

In the year 2000, Google began selling ad space on its search engine based upon keywords used in the ad. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. These ads were initially sold on click-throughs using a minimum of $0.05 per click. This was originally inspired by another company named "Goto.com" which later became Overture (which was then sold to Yahoo!). This advertising medium later became known as Google AdWords and

In 2001, Google started using PageRank, a method of telling people the importance of their web sites by use of a 1-10 scale. PageRank is based off of a number of factors of how your web site is built, including the importance of incoming links.

In recent years, Google has taken over other areas of the Internet with their technology.

1999: Google created the blogging software, Blogger, to allow people to platform ideas online.

2004: Google created Gmail, a free, web-based email program.

2004: Google created Google Earth, a satellite imagery program.

2005: Google creates Google Sitemaps and Google Webmaster tools to help in web marketing.

2005: Google entered into partnerships with AOL, NASA, and Sun Microsystems.

2006: Google created its Documents and Spreadsheets program to compete with Microsoft.

2006: Google accquired YouTube, the popular video sharing web site.

2006: Google accquired JotSpot, a wiki-based technology for collaborative web sites

In just ten, short years, Google has gone onto become the largest company in the United States, employing more than 20,000 full time employees. Additionally, it has been named the #1 company to work for, based on the fringe benefits its employees receive, such as: on-site cafeterias, massage centers, daycare centers, flex schedules and gaming consoles such as Nintendo's Wii, Sony Playstations, and Microsoft's X-box. Today, their estimated worth has risen from the $100,000 they started with initially to over $160 Billion.

Not too bad for a 10-year-old kid...