There an old adage that goes, “You waste half your advertising budget. The problem is you don’t know which half.” However, technology makes tracking each of your sales back to the ad that inspired it possible. And when you can attribute sales to advertisements and marketing programs you use, you can know which programs to expand and which to cut.

By paying attention to how your customers find you, you can track the revenue, profitability, and return on investment of your marketing and advertising efforts. By doing this, it is possible to get a strong understanding of the comparative effectiveness of all your marketing programs.

To start figuring out what ads are producing the most sales, you need to tag each person that calls you with how they found out about you. Sometimes the way they hear about you will be obvious, like when they bring in your newspaper ad or door hanger coupon. Most time, however, this will require you to ask how they heard about you. It should be part of the regular routine for each new person that calls.

Tagging your prospects and customers

Most customer managements systems have a place to mark a customer’s lead source.

These codes can track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns if they are associated with the customer’s record or the dispatch. With that kind of association, the code of the way the customer found you can be applied to their dispatch or invoices so you can see how much revenue and profit came from each of your ad programs in a given time period.

It’s important to come up with specific codes with meaningful descriptions for your various marketing programs so that you can clearly identify which campaign to attribute revenue.

For example, if you had a monthly door hanger campaign, you could code the January campaign as DOOR1.

These codes should not just be used and then discarded. Deleting codes will make it impossible to see how much revenue (or lack thereof) could be attributed to that marketing program.

Analyze the results

Another important component of identifying how customers found you is to analyze how much each lead source contributes in revenue for a given period of time. This information is vital to discovering opportunities to expand in certain areas of your marketing and advertising mix and what areas you should cut.

You should report on and compare the volume of sales attached to each of your marketing campaigns or advertisements. This is the only way to know which ones are effective and which are now.

With a detailed analysis you will be able to see the number of invoices attached to each code for the time period, and also shows the total sales dollars and percentage of total dollar sales for each code, allowing you to identify your most profitable types of sales.

Click on the image to see a larger version:

This is one effective way to make decisions about which advertising programs to expand or retract.

How do you decide what advertising and marketing programs are working? What measurements do you use?

Your company probably already has a Google Places “Page,” but if you have not claimed it yet, you are certainly not taking full advantage of all the free benefits a Google Places listing and page provides.

Google Places is similar to the Yellow Pages in that every company with a physical address is able to be listed. However, it is very important for local service companies to have a robust Google Places Page because these pages appear near the top of Google’s organic search results when a person does a local search.

Here’s a quick overview video of what Google Places and why you should use it for your business:

To get the most out of your free listing you should claim the listing, fill it out with all of your company’s important information, get customer review, create and keep it up to date with current content and coupons, and add photos and videos.

1. Claim your Google Places Page and make it your own

To claim your Google Places Page, go to Google.com/places. If you already have a Google account you can just log in. If not, it only takes a few minutes to set up an account, which you can do from the page.

Once your account is set up you can enter your business’s main phone number to see if it’s already listed on Google Maps. If it is you can go through the process of claiming the page which will allow you to edit the existing information as well as add other details, photos and videos.

Once you have logged in and claimed your page, it is important to fill out every field available on the form. The more complete a profile, the better it will appear to your customers and prospects when they find your listing in search. There is also a place to upload your company logo so that it can appear in the Google search results.

The form will ask for basic information about your company, information about your operating hours, what payment types you accept, as well as what your business does.

You are even able to define your service area. Rather than just having a static location, you can show on your Google Places page what Zip Codes you serve or even define a mile radius around your headquarters. The video below will give an overview of how this works:

The images below show the field you can fill out on your Google Places page.

Google has a comprehensive guide that will help you claim your page and get started optimizing your Google Places page.

2. Get Customer Reviews

It’s important to make it easy on your customers to review your company on your Places page. Reviews may raise your pages rank in the search results, but even if they don’t, reviews on your page adds credibility and lets prospects know that other people have used your services and been satisfied.

On your places page there is a link that you can copy into an email and send to your best customers requesting they write a short review of your company. Google says you are not allowed to offer incentives in exchange for reviews, so you will have to request reviews from customers you already have a good relationship with.

3. Keep your page fresh with current content

You are able to leave short, 160 character posts on your Google Places page. These short Twitter-like messages can be details about the services you offer, announcements of special events, introductions of new employees, promotional offers, or any other message. When you are logged into your Places page there is a box on the right side with the heading “Post to your Place page.”

You are also able to offer coupons to your customers and potential customers for your services on your Google Places page. These coupons will be visible at the top of your Places page. With these coupons it is important to make them unique to your Google Places page so that you can easily track their effectiveness. It is a good idea to keep these coupons fresh. One way you can do that is by using them as seasonal promotions, giving you the excuse to offer various coupons throughout the year.

Keeping the messages and coupons up to date will keep your page fresh and current in the eyes of your customers.

4. Add videos and photos to your page

You are also able to add photos and videos to your places page. If you company has an ad you could upload it to YouTube so that your Places page visitors can view it on your site. You are able to have up to five videos so you could also use some of these spaces for video testimonials of your customer or videos of examples of your work.

You are also able to upload up to 10 images. These could be pictures of your service trucks, employees, job sites and work you’ve completed, or anything else that would be relevant to your customers.

For a complete check and to make sure you really get the most out of your free Google Places page, complete the Google Places Checklist.

After you are finished, share a link to your Places page in the comments so we can showcase the best examples.

It looks likes coupon use is up greatly this year. It’s probably because of the recession, and consumers are out to find cheaper ways to get their products

Coupon use is up 27% according to the nation's leading coupon processor, Inmar. Last year was the first year in the last 17 during which coupon redemption increased. Part of the increase may result from marketers' increased use of coupons as a promotional vehicle to drive sales during the downturn.

via Coupons: A Marketing Strategy that Works.

Does your service company use coupons to generate leads or work?

Combining coupons with your direct mail strategy may be a good way to leverage the effects of both.