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How do you know whether your advertising is effective or not? The answer is to track advertising response for each ad you run.

Whether you operate a retail store, a service business, a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business, you can measure the effectiveness of your advertising.

1. Which Publications Produce Profits?

When new customers phone or visit you, ask how they found out about you. They might say they found you through your yellow pages ad or your newspaper ad.

Record the responses and resulting sales from each ad. Then, analyze whether each particular advertisement is producing the desired results.

If an advertisement consistently produces profits for you, keep running it. On the other hand, if an ad consistently performs poorly or produces a loss, discontinue it.

In mail order, you can key each ad so that you can measure the resulting sales from each publication.

For example, you could add "Dept. A" to your name or address in the ad to indicate the July issue of a particular magazine. Key it as "Dept. B" for the August issue of the same magazine. "Dept. C" could indicate the July issue of a different magazine you advertise in.

Thus, as orders come in, you can track the response and sales made from each advertisement. From that information, you can easily determine the profitability of your ad in each publication.

2. Which Ads Produce Profits?

Not only can ad tracking show you which publications are profiitable to advertise in, but it will also help you measure the effectiveness of the ads themselves.

If you change your ad, and the results for the new ad are consistently better or worse, you can take the appropriate action; either continue or discontinue the advertisement.

Change only one element in an ad at a time.

For example, if you decide to change the price, don't change the headline. Otherwise, you won't know if the difference in results was due to the changed price or the changed headline. For greater certainty, change only one thing at a time when testing your ads.

On the Internet, you can use tracking software and services that will aid you to determine the source of your sales and the effectiveness of your advertising, article writing, and other activities.

So, whether you operate a retail store, a service business, a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business, use ad tracking for increased profits.