Tracking Where Your Clients Find You is Just as Important as Tracking Where the Heard about You

Tracking where clients hear about your business is common practice for many business owners who want to manage their limited resources more effectively. What many forget to track is where the customer found their contact information. Isn't that the same thing? No it's not. They may have heard about your company or service from a friend, an advertisement or an article but they got your contact information from somewhere else.

Creative advertising is the type that raises awareness and is very expensive. If you want to be top of mind in your customer and prospects mind then you need to continually get your name in front of them one way or another. Newsletters, magazine advertising, community newsletter advertising, direct mail, TV and Radio are all ways of getting your brand in front of the marketplace.

You will need to ensure a few things are present in all your creative advertising:
1. Picture - Images of your Product being used should and invoke the viewer to desire it
2. Creativity - Must stand out and make the viewer to want to pay attention
3. Slogan - Must be catchy and memorable
4. Participation - It needs to inspire the viewer to participate
5. Brand - This is your Logo, Image and marketplace's perception of your product
6. Location - Where can they go for more information or to try it out.

Creative Ads are located in mediums that are not kept, they are located in places people are looking for something else, mostly entertainment. The purpose is repetitive images to keep your product in the minds of the marketplace, whether they want it or not at that moment.

Why does McDonalds and Coke, both leaders in their industries, spend millions of dollars on advertising? To keep their products in the minds of the consumer so when the consumer is thirsty or hungry they will first think Coke or McDonalds. Coke is Cola and McDonald's is fast food. Be the product of your industry through creative advertising.

By asking your customers where they heard about your product you can allocate funds in a focused and cost effective way gaining the most return on your investment. Think you're too small for creative advertising - you're not, you just need to figure out where your customers are and find the most cost effective way to get your image there.

Directional advertisements are on kijiji, newspaper classifieds, and the phonebook. These ads are very different from creative ads because the information in the ad must be different. Consumers are looking at directional ads because they are looking to buy something and need to know particulars about the item and business. The desire to buy and awareness has already been met, now its time to choose where to find the item they want.

Directional ads need to have the following information:

1. Reliability - What makes your business credible and reliable?
2. Approved Brands - What brand names do you sell? Brands have already paid for the Creative Advertising and awareness, now you have to let the consumer know where to go.
3. Special Features - What features does your business provide that consumers may be looking for? Warranties, Financing, Convenience, Delivery.
4. Compelling Reason to call you for what they want, what makes you different from the competition? Why should they call you instead of the other guy?
5. Picture or Illustration of the product or service provided. Pictures get noticed and are worth a thousand words even in directional ads. In creative you are trying to gain interest by showing the product in use or it's benefit, in directional you need to show the product the consumer will be looking for.
6. Location and Contact information.

Creative ads and directional ads work together by creating awareness and desire for a product and then providing the consumer information when they need it. For example, if you have a billboard ad that has made a consumer aware of your product, when it comes time to buy it the consumer is not going to drive to your billboard, they look in directories.

This is why it is important to ask both where they heard about your business and where they found your contact information. In some cases the answer will be the same, other times they will be very different. Make sure you are listed where the consumer will look when they need you.

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