Advertising

It's important to make the most of your advertising spend. Work out a maximum budget. Identify which options give the best possible return. It could be one or two adverts in a more expensive medium, or several adverts in cheaper outlets.

You can calculate how much it costs to reach each potential customer. For example:

• if an ad costs £2,000 and reaches 20,000 people
• assume 50% of that audience are your target customers
• the cost to reach each potential customer is 20 pence

Managing responses

You can measure the success of your advertising campaign by the number of responses you receive. Make sure you have the right resources to handle the increase in enquiries.

You should determine the expected response level and check you have enough resources to meet it.

It may not be a good idea to plan a campaign at popular staff holiday times. If you can't avoid this, consider temporary cover to deal with responses.

You may need a system to ensure leads aren't missed. For example, you could design a standard enquiry form to be used by people fielding calls.

Monitoring an advertising campaign

Each time you take an enquiry or make a sale, ask how the customer heard of you. This reveals whether any individual strand of your advertising or other marketing activities is particularly effective. Check to see if there are any patterns in enquiries relating to when and where you display your advertisements.

If you include vouchers in print advertisements, use a different code for each publication they appear in. This allows you to pinpoint where incoming vouchers have come from.

Improve campaign effectiveness

If some ads generate a lot of enquiries but no sales:

• review your advert content to ensure the message is clear and relevant
• check if your staff need additional sales training to convert enquiries into purchases

Measure profitability

Evaluate the types of sales your ads generate and whether they have good profit margins.

Understand advertising delays

You should bear in mind that some advertisements may have delayed results. For example:

• expensive products - customers may take weeks or months to make a purchase
• brand awareness campaigns - these are harder to measure because the goal is to keep your brand in customers' minds for future purchases.