Direct mailings, with discounts for 1st time clients. 20%. Best so far. Email advertising has generated 0

I think this post is right on. If you are doing any sort of advertising campaign you need to be able to track what is working and what is not. I have used unique urls that allow me to track publication, offer, creative, audience and more. It does require some administrative work on the back end since you need to track clicks and orders through the unique urls but it is definitely worth it. If you have enough time between print issues, or you are doing advertising on a website or an enewsletter, you can tweak your offer or creative based on results.

E-mail ads/offers have never worked for us. But in analyzing it, we realized that we delete tons of e-mail ads without ever looking at them even those from companies we have interest in. We decided others have to be doing the same. We are considering going to direct mail after noticing that very few direct mail pieces now come no doubt since soooo many use e-mail. DM is a lot more expensive but it might be a better way to get noticed.

We have tried the following since 1986 - Direct Mail - get about a 5% on average return, 4 x6 Post Card to the named addressee - a 62% return, Email campaigns 2 % return, tried radio spot ads - no return, Fax mailing general no names - 11% return, Fax Mailing to a specific addressee - 36% return, Google Website banners have produced a 1 % return. Yahoo Website banners produced a 3.5% ROI. Social Media banner ads which I canceled shortly afterwards, brought me a big mess of non- buyers, time wasters and folks who wanted information and didn't want to act on it. It also brought my a lot of time wasters who were in SE Asian foreign countries, [i][u]which we don't have the capacity to serve. [/u][/i]Haviing a very specialized recruiting firm involved in [b]exclusively recruiting packaging and flexographic[/b] [b]printing talent[/b] for US based companies, doesn't allow us the time to serve many foreign companies except those looking for US based talent. Our best bet: Those time consuming 4 x 6 postcards with our business card on one side and message on the other have been our best bet. Our next venture into the electronic world will be with video email to direct contacts using eyejot.com we beta tested it to 50 companies earlier this year and those who opened the video email got a 10% off invoice discount for the first person they hired and a 20% off invoice for the 2nd person up to 10th person they hired. We got a 8 % ROI on the beta test. So we are going to try it again after the US elections.

Great post. Exactly what I need! I've started using adwords this year and I'm a little stumped as to how I can track/analyze my response rate and conversion to sale. I have a individual landing page for the adwords click through's with an email form the customers can use to contact us for an estimate. That page also has a phone number they can call but the large majority of them use email. How do I track these prospects from their adwords clicks though the landing page estimate request email to their (hopefully) final conversion? I'm getting quite a few emails for estimates but not so many conversions. So I'm wondering if the adwords are making me a profit (or even paying for them selves). Thanks Chris Anderson Wasatch Back Hydoroseeding.com

When tracking your advertising give it sufficient time to work. I see many small business owners who run advertising for two or three weeks and then abandon it because it didn't generate a response. It's important to give advertising time to work. Also, you will find that your ROI will improve if your advertising and marketing are part of a consistent, overall strategy. Companies who are consistent with their marketing and messaging have a much greater ROI.

I tried adwords for a while but back when it was a little newer concept. It increased site traffic but never paid for itself. You have to spend more and more to get the ad showing enough. An analytics (Google, GoDaddy) program will tell you where all your traffic comes from.

Meg, you left out 1 very important part (at least to me) and that is the all important message. Any consistency is worthless if the message isn't there. What you have to say is far more important than how many times you say it. All of the ad reps i have worked with just don't want to get that. They are all about just being on and being on a lot and that just isn't enough.

I agree Todd! You have to have the right message and the right creative, otherwise you will wate alot of money.