Determining whether or not your Internet marketing campaign is working for you is a very important part of the advertising process.
This is so important because while there is a great deal of Internet marketing which can be done without a great deal of expense, other types of marketing online efforts do have financial costs associated with them.
Also, in both cases there is a time and energy burden to orchestrating the Internet marketing.
For all of these reasons it is important for business owners to continuously evaluate their marketing techniques and strategies to determine what is working and what is not.
This will help the business owner to focus his efforts on marketing strategies which are providing positive results as opposed to those which are either not providing results or are only providing lackluster results.
Starting an Internet marketing campaign is only the first step in the battle.
Sure it is a good idea to start an Internet marketing campaign if members of your target audience are likely to use the Internet to research or purchase the products you sell or the services you offer but these marketing efforts may turn out to be a complete waste of time if you are not diligent about evaluating the response to your Internet marketing.
This means each time you implement a change to your marketing strategy; you should evaluate the results of the change to determine whether or not it generated a greater profit for you.
This is important because it can help you determine what is working and what is not working for you.
Evaluating the response of your Internet marketing can be done in a number of different ways.
Customer surveys and embedded HTML code are two of the most popular methods of evaluating the effectiveness of an Internet marketing campaign.
This article will examine a few different marketing strategies as well as how business owners can evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies.
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Customer Surveys
Customer surveys can be as simple or as complex as you like depending on the amount of feedback you would like to receive.
However, one of the most effective ways to find out how well your different marketing tactics are working is to include a question asking the consumer where they first learned about your products or services.
This is important because if you find a great deal of your customers are learning about your products or services through a particular venue, it is a good indication this method of advertising is working quite well for you.
Tracking Engagements
Embedding code into your advertisements for the purpose of receiving feedback is also a popular method of evaluating the response to your Internet marketing strategies.
Advertisements can be coded so the business owner receives feedback each time an Internet user clicks through a particular advertisement.
This is useful for letting the business owner know which of his advertisements are attracting the most attention.
If the business owner is using two different designs for his advertisements, he may discover one design is attracting more attention than others and may make the decision to convert all of the advertisements to a more effective style.
Similarly, a business owner who is running the same advertisement on several different websites may discover he is receiving more traffic from one website than others.
He may also discover some websites are not attracting much attention at all. This would give the business owner an indication of which advertisements to cancel and which ones to keep running.
Website traffic
Finally, the response to an Internet marketing campaign can be evaluated by carefully reviewing website traffic statistics after implementing changes to the marketing strategy.
This information is useful because an unusual spike in the amount of website traffic immediately after implementing a stage of the marketing campaign can provide positive feedback that the change was well received by potential customers.
While this method of evaluating the response to an Internet marketing campaign can be effective it is important to note implementing multiple changes at once will make it difficult to determine which changes were the most effective.
Therefore, if you plan to use website traffic as feedback for how well your marketing strategy is working it is important to only implement one major change at a time so they can each be evaluated separately.
Affiliate marketing Evaluation
Affiliate marketing is certainly one of the most cost-effective Internet marketing strategies available.
This marketing strategy involves having other website owners known as affiliates post an advertisement on their websites to direct Internet traffic to your website.
This marketing strategy is cost effective because in most cases the affiliate is only paid when he produces a desired result such as enticing an Internet user to click through the advertisement or to purchase a product or service once they click through the ad.
While the business owner is only paying for the advertisement when it produces a desired effect, it is still worthwhile to evaluate the effectiveness of these ads to determine whether or not they are working well.
Fortunately, affiliate marketing ads have a natural feedback mechanism which makes it easy to evaluate how well the ad is working. This feedback is provided in the form of code embedded in the advertisement which specifies which affiliate generated the website visitors.
This information is provided for the purposes of issuing payment to the affiliate but it can also provide the business owner with useful information on which affiliate ads are the most effective.
This information is especially useful when the affiliates are posting different ads.
The business owner may conclude the ads posted by the more successful affiliates are more appealing to potential customers and may opt to use this style of ad for all of their affiliates.
Business owners who use Internet marketing strategies such as posting on message boards to promote their business might want to consider asking customers to complete a short survey when making a purchase.
This survey can include useful demographic information which is always helpful for marketing as well as information regarding where the customer learned of the products or services you offer.
Including the message board web address as one of the responses will give you a good indication of whether or not the message boards are helping to drive customers to your website.
You may also have some unofficial feedback in terms of the response to your postings on the message board.
If the general consensus is in support of your posts, you may infer you are generating some interest in your business or website through this tactic.
Finally, an Internet marketing strategy can be evaluated by studying website traffic results as well as sales receipts.
Anytime you implement a new Internet marketing strategy or technique it is worthwhile to study your website traffic reports and sales receipts carefully to determine whether or not there is a spike in either traffic or sales immediately after the marketing effort.
For example, if you send out an e-newsletter to those who have requested additional information about your products or services, you may notice there is an increase in traffic or sales soon afterwards.
This is a good indication the e-newsletter was well received and effective.
However, if there is not a marked increase in traffic or sales subsequent to the e-newsletter it indicates the marketing effort was not effective.
