| Using Ad Tracking Tools |
You HAVE to know how well your ads are doing. You cannot
just cast thousands of them into the wind and HOPE that,
maybe, you will get results. You must find out where is
good for your offer and which ads & headlines pull best.
Indiscriminate advertising will never generate sufficient
results for the amount of effort you'll put in. It will get
some results, but you'll be working hard, not smart and
you'll find it very hard to make any real progress.
In order NOT to have to spend a fortune or post ads 48 hours
a day for 2 clicks in return, you need to narrow it down by
testing so that you can then spend your precious time and
money, concentrating only on what works best -- for you.
With all due respect to the people who are taking the time
and effort to publish their results and recommendations on
advertising sources that were good for them, that's what
they were. Good for THEM, their ads, their offers.
Their information certainly does have much use as general
quality indicators, but just because something worked for
Joe Guru, does not mean that it will for you and your
products. You are not them. Your ads are not the same.
You need to test and test some more -- for yourself.
So how do you do that exactly?
Well, there are lots of tracking systems available, either
third party (this means your links go via their website and
they keep the statistics in a member area that you access)
or you can get scripts to do this on your own site.
The first option is undoubtedly easier. You just get an
account, log in and use it. The price for this convenience
is that these usually have a monthly recurring fee.
Doing it yourself, means rolling up your sleeves to install
a script. There are free ones available, but even with a one
off purchase, you can save a lot of money doing it this way.
Whichever one you choose, you'll paste your "real" links
(the web addresses you want people to actually visit) into
the tracking system and it gives you back a "new" link that
you would publish in your ads. How easy can it get?
You'll be able to set up as many links as you like and keep
adding to them, as you wish. You only need one account or
script system in order to track multiple links, ads,
websites, offers, affiliate links, whatever.
Each time you create a new ad, create a new tracking link
specifically for it's use, so you can compare results.
There are several more benefits and uses:
=> If you have a very long affiliate URL, it saves it
getting chopped in half in a newsletter or any other email
message, as the original link obviously would.
If it gets chopped or broken, it won't be "clickable", which
means, to respond to your ad, someone would need to copy and
paste it in bits into their browser. Yeah! You think so?
No-one will ever bother, because it takes too much effort
to do that. In reality, they will either click what comes in
the first line, ending up at the wrong place -- usually the
*right* place, but without your reference on -- or much more
likely, they will just skip it altogether.
=> Tracking links are often generic -- i.e. they don't
identify your program or product so there is still an
element of "surprise" that will help you get the click.
People won't visit if they think they've seen it before.
=> It reduces cheating. It may still be a URL with a number
on the end, but if anyone tries to alter or take the numbers
off a tracking link, they'll probably just get an error. If
they knock the numbers or reference off your affiliate URL,
then they may still end up at the right place, but you won't
earn the commission if they decide to buy something.
=> You will find out if anyone actually IS responding! I
mean how many are responding and to which ads, etc.
Track a whole ad campaign ...
Use different tracking links, for the same product/url, but
with different ads or for the same ads in different ezines.
Give each "campaign" a reference that you'll remember, so
you can find out which ads work best, which ezines pulled
more responses, so you know where to advertise again or if
you should maybe "tweak" your ads for better results.
You can also use tracking links on your website. You'll be
able to see how many people are clicking away to certain
links on your site, both internally or externally. Your log
files should tell you where people go internally, but if
you don't have them, here's an alternative. Your log files
don't send you email each day as many tracking tools do!
At the most simple, you could do your own tracking by making
each campaign it's own page with a (preferably invisible)
counter. If you have access to log files on your site, "key"
your URLs with references so you can count the responses to
each. Or set up different redirect pages for each ad.
Just don't leave it to chance, or you'll spend more time
chasing your own tail than actually making profit.
Copyright © 2003 Pamela Heywood
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