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Marketing is a tricky thing. On one hand, the idea is to bring in more paying customers (or non-paying supporters) to your organization by spreading the word using one of a thousand methods of marketing. The problem is that most marketing methods aren’t directly measurable by a local or even national organization. Consider if you were to setup a booth at a local holiday festival. You talk to a thousand people and over the next month, 500 more buy your product than normal. But, it’s the holiday season. And, you have no way of tracking whether or not prospects that you engaged at the booth will come this month, next month, or even next year.
Enter online marketing: It’s measurable, relatively cheap, can be highly targeted, and gets you results when managed correctly. Here are some examples of different measurable marketing and what they can tell you about your demographics, customer behavior, and traffic behavior.
Social Media:
Social media is free, easy-to-use and can provide powerful results that especially help you in determining your customer demographics. Keep in mind, however, the social media isn’t for all companies. If you run a construction company, social media might not be the best way to attract customers.
Pay per click:
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most targeted measurable marketing that you can buy. Using Google AdWords or Bing Ads you can target individuals looking for specific keywords who may already be interested in what you have to offer. With Facebook Ads, you can specify specific demographics down to the age range, geographic location, and even interests and hobbies.
Google Analytics:
Google analytics is the perfect way to track your incoming traffic and determine who is sending people to where on your website. Setting up specific metrics on your dashboard is the easiest way of doing tracking your incoming customer’s behavior.
Using all of these methods in-line with each other will give you a very clear picture of how your marketing is going and how your customers are behaving over time. It also gives you a baseline of where you should be at with your traffic and where your goals should be.
Keep in mind that we’re not saying online marketing is the end all; a proper marketing campaign will have a balance between multiple marketing methods depending on your target market and business type.