by Alyssa Craft | Jul 22, 2014 | Analytics
Despite the popularity of online marketing, many small businesses still make large investments in offline marketing campaigns that include newspaper and magazine ads, billboards, radio and TV commercials, direct mail, trade shows, and more. It is commonly believed that offline marketing efforts cannot be tracked, but this is simply not true. Methods for tracking offline marketing efforts are not perfect, but they have great potential to let you know whether your marketing is helping you achieve your business goals. It is said that you cannot improve what you cannot measure, so why not measure what you can? Today, I’ll share five ways you can start tracking your offline marketing. How to Track Offline Marketing Campaigns 1. URL Redirects One way to track your offline marketing efforts is to set up a URL redirect. If your main business website is at the URL www.yourbusiness.com, you could set up another URL at www.yourbusiness.com/identifier that redirects to your main page. By using Google Analytics, you can see how many people visited that unique URL. Pros: This is easy and effective. If you are on WordPress, I suggest using a plugin called Pretty Link Lite. The number of links you can create are unlimited with this plugin. Cons: Someone may still type in your main URL even though the campaign inspired them to visit. They may also just Google your business name. 2. Unique Phone Numbers By using a unique phone number for each offline advertising tactic, you will be able to see how many times that number was called and attribute it to a specific campaign. Pros: Over time, you can collect...
