How Many Sales Have You Made After Your Advertising Campaign?
by Radhika Venkata
When you start your online business, you will go through a series of steps like: ==>Domain registration ==>Website designing and installing your inventory and order links ==>Advertising about your products or service
Regarding advertising, you should always target your audience.When you are selling garden tools in Miami, you will get better results with offline advertising and Joint Ventures with other websites that are focused on Gardening and pointing to Miami area.
After Advertising, one important step is 'TESTING' your advertising campaign.
Why?
Look at this example.You spent $50 on keeping an ad on some famous site or a email campaign.Let's say this is one time ad.
If you don't know how many people clicked on your URL or how many people bought your product coming through that link, how are you going to spend another $50 on the same advertising method?
Rather than Click thrus you can go one step further and calculate the number of sales per one advertising method.
Here are few methods you can use to track your results.
**1.Email Tracking:
If you have ezine and you are keeping your subscription email links in different places like other ezines, websites and ebooks, you can give a little code to your email address.
Like this-
subscribe@yourdomain.com?subject=ezine
subscribe@yourdomain.com?subject=ebook
First one in ezines and second one in your ebook.That little code goes in to subject area of emails.
By seeing your emails you can know from where you are getting more response.
**2.URL Tracking:
There are different ways to track your URLs.
You can keep your URL with a little code similar to emails.
www.yourdomain.com/product.html?source=ebook
You can also upload a different page for your each ad campaign.See the example below.
You have a page like- www.yourdomain.com/product.html
Then you can upoload the same page with different URL like- www.yourdomain.com/prod.html
So the visitors that comes to that page can be seen in your weblogs.If you have a good logging software you can save all the visitors information for that particular page.Check this weblogger-
http://www.logitpro.com/
http://perlonline.com/
This weblogger tells you exactly how many hits are taking by one webpage and referers.
So you can see how many hits are coming to your '/prod.html' page and referers.
**3.Click Tracking Software:
Click tracking script is a cgi script that gives you information about a click. The click may be on your website, emails, ezines, banners or anything.
If the click tracking script tells you the number of clicks it is not going to be useful to you. Because you can't differentiate the people buying through your campaign links or your regular links.
So what a Click tracking script should tell you?
1. Tell the number of clicks to tell the click thru ratio:
By this you can optimize your ads. If a specified ad get low click thrus you can change the optimize it.
2. Tell the ip address of the visitor.
By this you can know which ad bringing you the sales. If a particular ip clicking on a specific link buys your product you can know that ad campaign's ROI.
3. Tells the geographical distribution of the clicks.
This is useful when you want to know how many clicks coming from different countries. Like if you see 'jp' with ip address, you can know the visitor from Japan. But this is not possible in all cases.
http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/clicktracking/index.shtml
This is a FREE Click tracking script that gives you all needed information. It comes with easy admin panel.
IMPORTANT TIPS IN TESTING YOUR ADs:
==>If you think your URL is 'Alive', don't delete that page on your server.
If you keep an ad in your ezine articles and submit to other ezines, your articles will be spread all over the net after a while.If you delete that URL on your server people will get '404 page not found' error and you will lose your potential visitor.
==>In email campaigns consider short URLs.Long URLs will break up in to two lines and the reader can not click on it to get your desired page.
==>Test ONE VARIABLE at a time.Suppose you want to check the response and sales rate for two different types of sales letter and by giving free gifts with your product. Don't test both at once. First check the sales page variable.If you don't get good response then go to free gifts variable.
If you get good response to one of the sales pages, then use the free gifts method in different advertising campaign.
Good luck!!
About The Author
Radhika Venkata - Subscribe to 'EbookBiz Magazine' which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!
http://www.ebooks-world.com/freetosell.shtml
Webmaster Resources: List Your product, ezine or web site free! http://www.webmasters-central.com/
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Website Advertising Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
David Barnes, Lead Evangelist for IBM Emerging Internet Technologies will discuss aspects of Web 2.0 that bring value to corporations, academia, and government. He'll also discuss IBM's vision around Web 2.0, including the importance of remixability and consumability. The discussion will culminate with examples of various IBM Software Group solutions you can use to get ahead of the Web 2.0 adoption curve.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
This whitepaper presents the benefits of successfully introducing static analysis into your organization using IBM Rational Software Analyzer. Additionally, it identifies some common pitfalls that can hinder the effective use of static analysis tooling as well as presents 10 simple strategies designed to help you quickly realize the value of static analysis using Rational Software Analyzer.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Build secure Web services with transport-level security using IBM Rational Application Developer V7 and IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.1. Follow this three-part series for step-by-step instructions about how to develop Web services and clients, configure HTTP basic authentication, and configure HTTP over SSL (HTTPS). This first part of the series walks you through building a Web service for a simple calculator application. You generate and test two different types of Web services clients: a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) client and a stand-alone Java client. You also handle user-defined exceptions in Web services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
CakePHP is a stable production-ready, rapid-development aid for building Web sites in PHP. This "Cook up Web sites fast with CakePHP" series shows you how to build an online product catalog using CakePHP.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download IBM DB2 Express-C 9.5, a no-charge version of DB2 Express 9 database server. DB2 Express-C offers the same core data server base features as other DB2 Express editions and provides a solid base to build and deploy applications developed using C/C++, Java, .NET, PHP, and other programming languages.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Discover how IBM Rational AppScan Standard Edition can help you detext vulnerabilities in your web applications in the Web Application Security eKit. IBM Rational AppScan is a leading suite of automated web application security solutions that scan and test for common Web application vulnerabilities. The new Web Application Security eKit provides you with valuable resources, including white papers, demos, and additional information on the benefits of testing your Web applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this webcast to see how IBM Data Studio Developer and pureQuery can take the pain out of Java data access. uApplications developed using both Java and SQL have become a common requirement. Database connectivity using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to create an application is a multi-step tedious process, and tooling that covers both SQL and Java has been unavailable, until now. IBM Data Studio introduces the pureQuery platform: a high-performance, Java data access platform focused on simplifying the tasks of developing, managing, and optimizing database applications and services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn from the best! Find out how developers use Rational ClearCase to be more flexible, innovative and deliver higher quality code in the Rational ClearCase Power Users eKit. This complimentary eKit provides a collection of materials, like articles, whitepapers, and demos that can help you become a power user of Rational ClearCase.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference, to hear how Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) eliminates the need for tedious and error-prone low level coding, so developers can focus on business requirements. EGL extends the Rational software development platform with a simplified programming language that enables developers who have little or no experience with Java, Web technologies or Service Oriented Architecture, to create enterprise-class applications and services quickly and easily. It also allows developers who may have little or no mainframe programming experience to quickly create traditional mainframe components.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
In this webcast, you'll get an introduction to the eXtreme Transaction Processing (XTP) features of WebSphere Extended Deployment and the common architectural traits required by XTP applications. See how WebSphere Extended Deployment's ObjectGrid feature provides a state-of-the-art infrastructure for hosting XTP applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
