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You expect your online media campaigns to be FASTER, EASIER and CHEAPER than traditional media. So now’s a great time to revisit some of the basics that sometimes get lost in the hustle of fast-paced days, budget and time crunches, and updating your Twitter status. (You don’t really do that on the job, do you? You? Of course not.)  Some actually will cost a little extra, but they will help you optimize your buy and save your time, and you can’t put a price on that (even though your boss might):

Unique Telephone Numbers. Want to know if people are picking up the phone and calling from your Yahoo landing page or your Google landing page, your ad on AOL.com or your ad on Weather.com?  Use a custom telephone number. Your call to action makes it super-easy to track what’s coming from where.

Custom URLS in your traditional stuff. In addition to unique tracking URLS in your online media placements, make sure you apply them to your offline strategies as well.  Why send your billboard ad to yoursite.com when you could send them to yoursite.com/Free and then track the online traffic from this direct URL?

Pixel tracking. One little pixel can ensure we track conversions from your PPC ad to your product sale, email sign up, whitepaper download, etc. and help us determine your ROI. For example, in a search campaign, we set up pixel tracking in Google adwords, but your website partner or internal webmaster is going to have to put the code on the appropriate thank you page. It really isn’t that hard (though the tech folks may want you to think so).  Don’t let one little pixel slow you down from joining the conversions hall of fame.

Know your metric for success, and tell us.  Is it product sales at $450.00 a piece that translates to a 15% advertising cost of sale?  Great.  Letting us know what you consider to be a successful campaign will help us eliminate the media placements that we know can’t garner you this type of result.  We don’t know a 25% advertising cost of sale is bad if you don’t tell us.

Reporting, reporting, reporting.  Tell us how we’re doing!  We know how many leads we’ve generated for you.  What we don’t know is how those leads are doing in your call center. We may have ideas on how to improve those conversions with follow-up campaigns.

Yes, these may seem like online marketing 101. Yet we are often surprised how often they get overlooked. Our media team can help you review your online campaign for the basics and the deep-end stuff at any time. Give me a shout and we’ll schedule a review of your existing media plan, whether it’s with us or someone else.

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