As a small business you have to ensure that your advertising is targeted towards people in your local area, and towards people that are likely to be interested in your services. However, most small businesses fail to advertise effectively. They either under-invest in marketing, or they fail to track and monitor the impact of their advertising spend on their sales.

Direct Mail Advertising

It’s possible to target the area where your customers live through direct mail. As a local company, this can be one of the best ways to engage with your potential customers. However, one problem with direct mail is that it’s hard to target intent. As a local plumber, it’s possible to target customers that are within the territory where you do business, but it’s hard to know if any of them actually require plumbing services.

With direct mail, you can track the success of your mailer through checking out what percentage of customers who received the letter buy from you. When you know where you sent the letters, it’s not hard to track with a relatively degree of accuracy. Some areas might respond better than others and therefore should have more marketing material sent their way.

Business owners are consistently finding that the internet can be a highly effective marketing channel. Not only is it easy to track how effective your marketing is, but you can also use that data to consistently streamline and improve how you invest in that medium. On the Internet, it’s also much easier to target consumers; you can do so by intent, demographics and context.

Measuring Returns

In order to ensure you achieve a strong ROI for your business, it’s necessary to ensure you’re measuring everything – and also testing everything too. Thanks to website analytics software, it is possible to measure which sources send traffic that converts into sales or the action you are looking for the consumer to take. You can also use website analytics software to test two alternatives to the one webpage – you can then know for sure what factors are improving and what factors are reducing conversion rates.

You may be asking: isn’t it expensive? The answer is a firm no. You can use Google’s free analytics software and get things started for free. Many large companies rely on Google analytics; however others choose to invest in more expensive solutions. It’s up to you to decide for yourself. But, either way, getting analytics software installed is useful if you want to track the results of your internet marketing campaign.