One of the hardest parts when it comes to running and managing an offline marketing campaign is tracking the results of it.
For example:
-
- How many people viewed your ad?
- Was there an increase in phone calls after the marketing campaign?
- How many people went and bought something after viewing the ad?
Unlike offline advertisements, online platforms such as Google Adwords are a breeze to work with. You can easily view how many visitors clicked on the ad and purchase something from the website. You can also view all your other data relatively easily such as cost per click, conversion rate, cost per conversion, etc. Because you have all this data in front of you, you can make a sound business decision to pause the campaign, keep them running or scale it up.
On the other hand for offline advertisements, it is quite hard to get all these data in front of you and your board.
The good news is that there are a few ways to track the results of your offline marketing campaign.
The six tracking methods we will cover in this post are:
- Create a new website
- Generate QR codes
- Use landing pages
- Use annotations in Google Analytics
- Renting numbers from call tracking providers
- Search for (insert marketing campaign slogan)
1. Create a new separate website
The first way to track your offline marketing campaign is via a new website. Basically, you create a new website and any visitors who visited the website were people who viewed your ad.
If you realize this is what most film studios are doing in their movie trailers.
For e.g: In the trailer of the 2016 Batman v Superman movie, they had a link to their website at the end of it. Any visitors who visited www.batmanvsuperman.com are people who viewed the trailer. From there they can gauge how big the movie is going to be based on this number.
Another thing, they can do is track which country gets the most visits to their website which will most likely determine the success of the movie in each country.
2. Generate QR Codes
The second way to track your offline marketing results is via QR codes. What this does is when a prospect scans the QR code, they will be sent to your site where you can track where they came from.
What you need to do here is create a custom URL for each QR code with a URL builder. My favorite URL builder is the URL Builder for GA by Raven and QR code builder is Kaywa QR Code.
So let’s say you want to start promoting your business via brochures and business cards. What you can do here is create 2 QR codes, one for your brochure and the second for your business cards. Both QR codes will send them to two different URLs as shown below:
- www.selbys.net/?utm_source=offline&utm_medium=qr-code&utm_campaign=brochures
- www.selbys.net/?utm_source=offline&utm_medium=qr-code&utm_campaign=business-cards
The above URL might look complicated but the only difference between them is the bold text after “utm_campaign=”.
Now when a prospect scans your QR code from your brochures or from one of your business cards, you will know where they came from.
3. Use landing pages
The difference between creating a new website and a new landing page to track your result is a landing page is an existing page on your website that you create specifically for that marketing campaign.
When Lucas Films was promoting Star Wars: Rogue One, they created a landing page just for the Rogue One movie (http://www.starwars.com/films/rogue-one). From there they can gauge the level of interest for the movie before it releases.
They can also compare this to their other movies such as Star Wars VII.
For e.g:
- Rogue One got 1,000,000 page views after 2 months of running its marketing campaign
- Force Awakens got 2,000,000 page views after 2 months of running its marketing campaign
Of course, this isn’t 100% accurate but it definitely gives a good indication of how popular a movie is going to be before it releases.
4. Use annotations in Google Analytics
In Google Analytics, you can create an annotation/note. What this annotation does is that it puts a note on the date when you started your marketing campaign. From there you will get insights into questions such as:
- Was there any increase in website traffic after our TV ad?
- Did we have an increase in sales or quotes from our website or trade show?
Some example of when you would use annotations are:
- Just finish a trade show.
- Completed a webinar with 500 attendees.
- Gave out 1,000 brochures.
- Interviewed by Channel 9.
5. Renting numbers from call tracking providers
The fifth way to track your offline marketing campaign is by using a call tracking service provider such as CallDynamics and Delacon. What you will do here is rent a number from the provider and place that number on your marketing displays.
When you receive a phone call from the rented number it will get redirect to your desired phone line. With this, you will know that the call was generated from one of your marketing displays.
To get even more specific, you can rent multiple numbers and place each number on each of your marketing displays.
For e.g: You will be running a large marketing campaign all over Australia. You can rent one number for each city. From there, you will be able to track which city is generating you the most phone calls.
Another example would be placing different numbers for different marketing materials such as one number for your trade show brochures, one for your business cards, one on your marquee, one on your pull up banner, and one on your website.
6. Search for (insert marketing campaign slogan)
This tracking technique has been increasing in popularity quite rapidly especially with radio or TV ads. If you paid attention to those radio or TV ads, at the end they will mention something along the lines of “Search (insert marketing campaign slogan here)”.
For example: Search Jaguar Villains to bring out the villain within you or Google “Nimble home loans” to get your pre-approval today.
One thing to be aware of this tracking technique is you are counting on Google to show your targeted landing page or website on the #1 spot. To ensure, your landing page or website holds the #1 spot for the keyword you are mentioning in your ad, you have to do some on-page SEO or even link building before running your ad.
On the other hand where this tracking technique shine is when you have a very long website URL such as www.boostlawyersaustralia.com or www.rollybookclub.net.au. No one would go out of their way to type in your website URL.
A better way would be to mention in the ad “Google Boost Lawyers to book your free appointment” or “Search Rolly Book Club to find the most extensive book range in Australia”.
Recap
As of today, tracking your offline marketing campaigns won’t be as accurate as your online marketing campaigns but having some tracking in place is better than no tracking at all.
To recap, there are six tracking methods:
- Create a new website
- Generate QR codes
- Use landing pages
- Use annotations in Google Analytics
- Renting numbers from call tracking providers
- Search for (insert marketing campaign slogan)
Hopefully, these methods will give you more insights into your offline marketing campaigns and you and your team will be able to make a decision from there.