Are You Making These Common Small Business Advertising Mistakes? (Part 2)

In my last mini-article, I mentioned how many small business ads read more like a shopping list than the benefit-rich, call to action that a good ad should be.

Another very common mistake or oversight that 99% of small businesses are making right now is…

Failing to Test and Track Ad Response

Why should you test and track different ads? Because one ad, sales letter or web page may sell 2, 3 even 21 TIMES more than an alternative for exactly the same product or service. You need to know what’s working and what isn’t so you can cut the losers and optimize the winners.

How to Track Advertising Response

Tracking advertising response is as easy as asking callers where they heard about your company. As you publish more ads and test one ad against another, you’ll need to get a little more sophisticated with your tracking by implementing one or more of the following…

Coded coupons in your ads Different coloured reply-paid postcards Different department numbers Asking your callers to mention an offer or ask for someone by name etc.

Online it’s even easier - there are lots of great tracking software programs that will allow you to compare one page against another or one traffic source against another. We use and recommend ProAnalyzer Tracking Software to do this, but there are other good programs out there as well.

When one of my marketing consulting clients started tracking their ads a while back, they found that $500 newspaper ads were generating almost zero response, while cheap flyers were bringing in loads of customers. So they were able to save a bundle on ineffective advertising.

What To Test

You should test these things in your ads:

Headlines Offers Body Copy Guarantee Price

Hint: You’ll get the greatest return by testing headlines first.

When you find something that works, stay with it until you find something better. It really isn’t hard to improve your marketing ROI if you use this approach, yet hardly anyone does it! If YOU decide to take action on this tip, you can save money, leverage your marketing budget, and put some distance between you and your competition.

Simply making your ads sell harder can boost your business massively - start by testing and tracking your ads, and consider hiring a good copywriter - a small investment in professionally written copy will makes your advertising dollars work much harder.

If you haven’t already subscribed to the free monthly “Results-Driven Marketing Secrets” newsletter, sign up now so you can start implementing effective low-cost and no-cost marketing strategies in your business. Subscribe here…

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