Like with most areas of marketing, the tracking of results is necessary in order to determine the success of your campaigns. This should be done on a continual basis so you can ensure the strategies you are utilizing are working. It can also help you to determine when a strategy is not working so you do not continue to invest time and money on a strategy which is not beneficial to your business. The various options available for tracking the results of your online marketing campaign will be discussed in this article.
With banner ads, an online marketing agency will have a simple way of tracking their effectiveness. By placing a unique code in the banner ads, click feedback will be supplied each time someone clicks on the ad. This information is transmitted to the business owner so he can evaluate which of his banner ads are generating the most interest. If the business owner is currently using two different styles of banner ads on comparable websites he can use this information to determine which design is most effective. This is important because if one style is significantly more effective than the other it might be worthwhile to convert all of the banner ads to this style or to make changes which will make the two different styles more similar.
Using the same banner ad across many different websites will also provide feedback which can be used to decide which websites are generating the most traffic. If he determines some websites are not generating a great deal of traffic it makes sense to discontinue the banner ads on these websites as they are not cost effective.
Affiliate marketing is also another effective online marketing strategy, but again only if the results are tracked. This is necessary because affiliates are often paid according to the results they generate but it is also useful for determining which affiliates are most successful. It can also be useful if numerous ads are running on a multitude of affiliate websites as it indicates which are the most effective. Tracking the results of affiliate marketing is similar to tracking the results of banner ads. Unique codes can be placed in the ad so that data is collected when someone clicks through the ad.
Simply monitoring the results of the campaign is another way to evaluate the results of an online marketing strategy. This tracking is crucial when considering the type of marketing campaign you want to run. For example if you launch a new banner ad campaign with ads appearing on numerous high profile websites concurrently, you may notice an almost immediate increase in website traffic and sales. This information most likely indicates the banner ads are successful.
However, the problem with using this type of evaluation is it does not pinpoint successes or failures. If you launch your banner ad on five different websites at once you may notice an immediate increase in traffic and sales but will not be aware which websites are the most effective. For example, your advertisement may be running on five different websites but only one of these websites may be attracting attention for your business. Similarly if you are running several different styles of ads, some styles may attract more attention than others but you will not be able to differentiate simply by evaluating your website traffic and sales. The other four may only be generating minimal interest in your products or services. Making only one change at a time may make it easier in determining which change is working and which is not - this makes it easier in evaluating your online marketing strategy. You can always have your customers fill out a survey or a promotion code on how they arrived at your website as another way of pinpointing your online tracking.
