Yes! You Can Measure Advertising

[Joe Marconi]

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[TheTrustedMechanic]

Yes! You Can Measure Advertising

 

John Wannamaker, a prominent business man in the early 1900’s, once said, “Half of my advertising money is wasted, but the problem is I don’t know which half”. While there is some truth to this, there are things you can do to help zero in on your target market and find what forms of media are working for you.

 

To start, whenever a new customer arrives to you shop you need to ask this person, “How did you hear about us”? The person may say a friend, a TV ad or radio. This information must be documented and tracked. Equally important is to ask a second question, “Did you know about our shop before you saw the TV ad?” Many times they will tell you that they pass by your shop every day or heard about you though print ads, etc.

 

This is important information. You need to build a profile of how people find out about you, where they live, who they speak to, what local organizations they belong to. This is how you zero in on where to put your advertising dollars.

 

In other words, if you are spending money in the local newspaper and no one ever tells you they see your ad in the paper, you are probably wasting your money for that newspaper ad.

As a one man shop I find it hard to find the time to write up the work, do the work and finish the invoice, but I still try to ask where they heard of me. Another parameter I've been told to track is what station is on the radio in the car. If you have a lot of customers listening to NPR maybe you should "support" your local NPR radio station, if your customer base has a lot of hard rock listeners, maybe that would be a better station to advertise with.