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Many people, myself included, have promoted a website or business through advertising. This advertising can be print, radio, ezines or ads on websites. If you only run one ad at a time, it's pretty easy to track how successful it was. But what do you do if you have several ads running at the same time?

If you're running several ads, and business is coming in, you may wonder why it's important to track success. After all, you're busy. But it really is important for several reasons:

• You don't want to waste money by running an ad that isn't successful.
• You want to maximize your advertising dollars by running ads that draw the most response.
• If times are tough, you need your advertising to really draw in the clients.

Depending on how you want people to contact you, there are several ways to track your ads.

If people are calling a phone number to get more information, set up an appointment, or to receive some free gift, you can include the following in the ad:

• Have them ask for operator 27 or Carol. Give a different name and number for each ad.
• Have them ask for a specific extension number.
• Use a different phone number for each ad.

All you have to do is have the people answering the phone track the number or name people are asking for.

When people are mailing something back to you, put a code somewhere on the return postcard or form.

If you have people e-mail you, use a different e-mail address for each ad or specify what you want in the subject line. "Just send us an e-mail to receive your free gift, and put Free Pen Gift in the subject line". If the e-mail link is on a website, you can force a message in the subject line. All you have to do is add the ?subject=. It will look like this "emailname@yourdomain.com?subject=Whatever you want to appear on the subject line." In the subject line, include whatever code you want for tracking. This guarantees that the proper code will be sent with the e-mail

Sometimes, you may send a coupon to people and ask them to bring the coupon in for a gift or discount. You can easily code these items, then simply collect them when the customer comes in.

I've seen infomercials that instruct you to visit a website for more information. These companies often have a different web address for each commercial. This lets them track each commercial so they can get very specific about the best days and times to run the ads. The Tuesday at 8:00 commercial says to go to www.run27.com but that same commercial on Wednesday will tell people to go to www.run29.com. That way they can check the hits to a specific website at a specific time to fine-tune when to run their ads.

Tracking your marketing campaigns gives you the best "bang for your buck" so your business can maximize profits and reduce waste. It may be a little daunting at first to track everything, but it doesn't need to be complicated. This knowledge will let you optimize your return on investment, and allow your business to grow.