Are Your Ads Paying Off? – Part 1
How intentional are you with the money you spend on advertising? Do you know which ads pay off for you? Do you know which ones do not? (These same questions could be asked of any of the ways that you promote your business: networking, PR, etc.) Advertising can be one of your biggest budget items and if you aren’t tracking the results, you could be losing a lot of money. This is called tracking the RETURN on your advertising INVESTMENT (or advertising ROI). Let’s break down the steps in making advertising decisions and tracking ROI.
Set Sales Goals that Tie to Promotional Activities
When you are setting your sales goals, decide HOW you are going to achieve those sales goals. It’s easy to pull a number from the air and say, “In 2012, I want to book 15 weddings.” But what happens after that? What are you going to do to get those 15 weddings? This is when you have to be intentional about how you promote your business. For everything that you plan to do to promote your business, decide what you expect in return. For example:
I plan on booking 15 weddings in 2012. Based on the time and money I am investing, I expect to see the following:
- 2 weddings from ad in XYZ magazine
- 0 weddings from ad in QRS magazine (it’s great brand exposure and I don’t expect any return)
- 2 weddings from networking at LMNOP events
- 3 weddings from vendor/colleague referrals
- 2 weddings from client referrals
- 2 weddings from being featured in ABCD blog
- 4 weddings from WXY bridal show
Once you have these goals in place, you can start to work proactively for the return on investment. On advertising, your dollars are doing the work. But, for the other promotional activities, you’ll want to ensure that you are putting in the time to see the results. If you want to be featured on a blog, you’ll need to put in the time to make it happen.
By being intentional with your promotional decisions, you are taking the first step at ensuring that your money (and time) are achieving results. Come back tomorrow, when I teach you how to track your advertising ROI.
Great post! I’ve set my sales goals, however I didn’t think to break them down by each individual promotional activity, but by my advertising efforts as a whole. It seems that breaking them down individually would work much better so that you’ll see which of your efforts are actually paying off. Thank you for this!
How would I begin to go about getting my company/website featured on a wedding blog? You mention in this article “are your ads paying off? part 1” that you have to put in the time.. What sort of time in necessary and how is that time used in order to be featured?
Thanks! You guys are great and have helped me along so much in beginning my company.
Hi Lindsey! I think what you are referring to is getting published (editorial) instead of paying for advertising (advertorial). These are two different things. And, getting published requires a time investment rather than a dollar investment. My recommendation is to give yourself a goal of where you’d like to be published and how many submissions you want to make to be featured. For example: “I want to be featured on Weddings Galore Blog in 2012 and will submit 4 weddings to them. I will identify 4 weddings that I think are the best match for their blog’s audience and I will spend 15 hours each month getting my submission prepared and submitted.” (or something like that) You can find out more information on getting published here: http://www.sageweddingpros.com/2011/11/15/5-steps-for-getting-published/ And, if you don’t know about Two Bright Lights, you should check them out: http://www.sageweddingpros.com/2011/11/16/how-to-get-published-with-two-bright-lights-part-1/ .