Are you Testing and Tracking Your Online Marketing Strategies?
I can see the beads of cold sweat forming on your brow. But like it or not, testing and tracking helps know what marketing strategies work, and what do not.
Like any business, an author needs to develop and implement a strategic marketing plan. This is an essential part of any business success. And where you want to believe this or not – a writer or author IS a business.
Marketing is not universal. What work’s for one person may not work for another. You need to test and track to determine what works for you!
However, unless you’re traffic testing strategies, you may be losing a great deal of time and money.
Traffic Testing increases Sales
Dramatically increase your sales simply by taking the time to test and track your results. Not only will it help you to determine what’s working and what’s not, but it will also enable you to focus your efforts on the strategies that produce results.
When testing your marketing strategies, keep in mind a strategy that produces results for one author may not produce results for you. There is no ‘set in stone’ strategy that works for everyone. You must develop your own style and technique and test your results to determine what works for you.
If you have a hosted site, it will generate logs of your site visitors. You can also use the free and exceptional tracking tool: Google Analytics.
There are several online tracking resources to assist you in your testing and tracking endeavors. You can also opt to use some alternative methods. Here are two of several tracking methods you can use to track your online response rates:
URL
Advertising or Email tracking
You can track your ads simply by adding some special coding to your URL.
For example, let’s say you place a banner ad on another website about your or your book. To easily track the results of people clicking on your ad, you simply modify your URL to include the “ad” name or location.
To code your URL, add a question mark followed by a special tracking code to the end of your web address. The coded link will open your webpage normally and most visitors will be none the wiser.
Your code should look something like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/?ad1
The text after the question mark should identify a specific location ad or banner. You can code it any way you’d like but do not add spaces. Keep it simple.
To view your results, you’ll need to look at your blog or website log files. Your code will be displayed within your log files beside your URL. If you do not know where these log files are, ask your hosting provider for help.
Let’s say you put out a monthly newsletter and you want to know if people are clicking the text link or the image of your book more often. Email services, such as Mail Chimp, provide these statistics for you; however if your service does not, then you can easily track them using the code URL.
Tracking Email Responses via the Subject Line
You can track your email responses to specific ads by using the email subject.
Select a specific word to be placed within the email subject for each ad. Although you can request that a certain word be placed within the email subject, many times it won’t be supplied. To avoid this problem, you can create a special email link that will automatically fill in the subject when clicked on. Your link should look something like this:
mailto:you@yourdomain.com?subject=ad1
Conclusion
Testing and tracking your strategies is an essential part of doing business. By concentrating your efforts on strategies that produce results, you will not only increase your sales, but you’ll also save yourself a great deal of time and money.
