I’m always amazed at how many companies spend money marketing, but don’t measure the results. When you don’t measure and analyze the results, you might as well throw money out the door. The measurement of marketing efforts will help you in seeing what messages attract new consumers to purchase your products. It allows you to see what methods in marketing work and which ones don’t.

My famous line to businesses is “If you aren’t measuring, you are not marketing.” It really is that simple. Monitoring your marketing spend does not have to be difficult. For example consider the following options:

Marketing online? Use website analytics that show you what traffic is visiting your website and where they are coming from. This will show you what search terms they are searching for and finding you. You can also use this information to gauge whether or not you need to write more information on a specific topic, service or product. Online analytics provide you with real-time data – this is invaluable to any business that is spending money to market using the internet.

Marketing using television commercials? The first thing you must identify is your call to action. Are you driving them to a website url or are you asking them to call you? Perhaps it’s both. If you are driving them to a url, make sure you use a designated url that has analytics installed. This will help you gauge the online response of your commercial. If you are asking them to call you, use a specific telephone number so you can gauge how many telephone inquiries you get and how many of those inquiries result in a sale.

Marketing using a radio spot? This is a little more difficult, first of all if you are driving them to a url again make sure it is a designated url specific to the radio promotion. The same is true if you are asking them to call. You again want to make sure that you are using a designated telephone number that you can use to measure incoming calls.

These are just some of the examples and methods you can use to measure your marketing efforts. By understanding what marketing is working you can allocate more money to those methods and diminsh the money you are spending on methods that are not working for you.