If you’re looking at your promotions calendar and seeing an area that would benefit from doing some form of print advertisement, but you’re also nervous because you’re unsure of how to track the ROI of that endeavor, well we’re here to help. Tracking print advertising campaigns is extremely easy to do. While this won’t be an exhaustive list of every single option that there is, this will guide will give you a couple of the easier tools that can be implemented in little time.

A Simple Question

This is almost so easy that it is often forgotten about. Just ask. When you interact with a customer, just ask where they heard about you or about this promotion. The majority of the time the customer will give you an answer. Besides actually reaching out to your customers to ask, you could add a form on your website that when they fill out gives them the option of marking where they heard of you/your promotion.

Unique Tracking Promo Code

If you’re a person with a pulse, you love receiving discounts on products you purchase and use them almost everytime you get one. So why not use that desire, as a business, for tracking purposes? Once you’ve finalized the design of your printed ad, make sure to include a custom code that will be printed on the ad for a customer to use when they complete their purchase.

If you’re using an online store, then just build that code into your promotions portion of the site and it will keep track and provide you with reports every time a customer uses that code. Or, if you receive most of your orders over the phone/email/fax/other means, have the person at your business who is responsible for entering orders into your system to enter the code into every order that uses it. Every better yet, do both!

Additionally, if you do receive order online, you’ll be able to utilize Google Analytics to help track the ROI of that particular promo code. If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Google Analytics to track a printed ad campaign, follow the link at the bottom on this post.

Custom Landing Page

If you’re savvy with building web pages, or you have someone on your staff who is, then you might consider building a special page dedicated to the offering you’re advertising, called a landing page. When you create your landing page, make sure to give it a unique, and simple, URL so you can print it on the advertisement and your customers will remember it.

Again, just as Promo Codes, this is another option that Google Analytics will track for you, so if you need help, go back up to that link and learn more.

Unique Phone Number

Setting up a special phone number just for a promotion might seem old-school, but it works extremely well, obviously. If your business receives a lot of orders through the phone, just set up a special phone number that will only show up on the printed advertisement, so then if anyone calls, you know they’re responding to the ad. Ideally, you’d want to make the number spell out something relating to your business via the numbers being used, but that is a “nice-to-have”, not a must.

Try one or more of these ideas and you’ll be amazed at the insights you’ll gain on your ad campaigns. You’ll learn what works and what doesn’t, who’s buying from where and how much, and more!