It's pretty easy to go through the motions, purchase some design and printing for a few thousand leaflets and consider your marketing for the year 'done'. Tick it off in an Excel spreadsheet. And relax. But where did that money go? You might get a feel for a 'bump' in sales - or some customers mentioning that your hilarious postcard was the reason they came to you. After that, you're pretty much in the dark. By making better use of your website though, you can track the effectiveness of your offline marketing in a much more scientific way.
So, without further ado, here are our top 6 strategies to make better use of your website. It's quite long, so take a deep breath!
One easy way to find out whether people are interested enough in your marketing is to hold a copy of your website on a separate domain (make sure you take steps to omit it from the search engine spiders to avoid duplicate content penalties.)
By doing this, you can use a domain name that reflects your product or is just funnier or more memorable than your usual domain. Would you prefer to visit www.davesshoes.com or www.whackyshoetimes.com?
If that sounds a little demanding on your time or budget, you can specify a landing page using a formula that reflects the publication an ad might be running in. For example, if you're advertising in Country Living magazine (Britain's finest, magazine for people who like grass and stately homes) then you can might a URL such as www.davesshoes.com/cliving.
Both of these tactics let you take maximum advantage of cookies (see point 3)
Whether using a full domain name or URL, make sure that when someone visits that page they see something that reflects the bit of paper that's driven them to you. Using our 'Country Living' example, you might want to have pictures of Victorian Follies on the landing page and a message saying "Welcome to Country Living Readers." It's a way of emphasising the connection between your branding and something the visitor already feels comfortable with.
Even if you're not publishing in a magazine, but doing something more high-end (like perhaps sending out a pricey gimmick to carefully targeted individuals) make sure that what the visitor sees directly relates to whatever you've sent out.
Some people will be so blown away by your website that they'll fumble to get their credit card out there on the spot to buy something. Cooler heads, however, might decide to shop around a little first.
Cookies are small text files installed on PC when someone views your website. These can be updated by the website to record visitor behaviour. This gives you lots of cool information about how many times someone visited your site, what pages they looked at and pretty much anything else you want to measure.
Better still, you can retrieve this information and build into your sales or enquiry confirmation.
Cookies of course just track online transactions. But what about those people who prefer to use the phone (they do still exist, whatever your web agency tells you)? Simple. Set up a unique phone number that goes with the mailshot and appears on your landing page. When someone phones that number instead of your usual line - bingo!
Speak to your phone provider about the costs and practicalities involved in this.
Every time you open a magazine, 40 sheets of glossy paper fall on the floor. Perhaps you idly leaf through them on your way to the bin.
People will often publish thousands of leaflets and flyers and play a simple number crunching game, expecting only a very low percentage of people to respond - but enough to make the campaign profitable.
By giving away promotional discounts to people who receive a flyer you are creating a further incentive to visit - saving money is a great motivator for all of us. That bumps up the percentage of people who'll take action on your direct marketing.
For ecommerce sites, having a promotional code is also a way to further understand the effectiveness of the campaign as a whole. Did people visit but not buy? Did people buy but not use the discount code? Did people buy using the discount code but only for a particular product?
If you had that kind of information at your disposal, how it would affect your future marketing plans?
Of course, if your direct marketing is low quality, generic tosh then spending lots of time and money setting up an effective tracking system and fancy landing pages on your website is going to be a pointless exercise.
Consult very closely with your marketing agency. Get them to throw a few rough ideas at you. Look for messages and images that are different from your competitors. Don't be afraid of something that is a little bit less 'tasteful' than you'd normally commission. Remember: people have got see and respond to your marketing. They're more likely to do so if it chimes with a need they have, or if the ad itself is striking and attractive.
If you're using a good design house and a reputable printer, you should be able to get proofs of your designs a while before they are released. Your web design company will need to see them to create good landing pages, and know exactly when things are being sent out in order to set up the technical aspects ahead of time.
Double check the details. If your ad mentions a URL, make sure that URL is right and that it works when you type it into your browser. Make sure you place a test order through the site to check that the cookie tracking is working properly.
Just because you're advertising with paper or gimmicks doesn't mean you can't use online methods to track its effectiveness. In fact, using a website is one of the very few ways you can accurately understand what people are responding to. Consult your web design or web marketing agency and they'll be able to talk you through the process end to end. And most importantly: study the results and learn the lessons.
