What it is and why you want to be doing it.

I was having a conversation with one of my peers the other day. We were talking about his advertising budget and wanting to make certain he was spending money wisely… best publications, best type of ads, most bang-for-the-buck duration, etc.

It brought up the subject of keying and tracking – the process of proving the effectiveness of one promotion (or sales mechanism) over the other. Or, alternatively, validating the effectiveness of one. This is something that everyone from tshirt sellers to tractor wholesalers should be doing.

Here’s the routine most business people (online or offline) follow:

-They decide to start advertising. They want to advertise their business or maybe just a product, service, or information. Either way they decide it’s time to spend money and advertise.

-They give a little thought to what it is they want to advertise, pick the place (a magazine, newspaper, website, ad-word-type service, etc.) and then sign up.

-They chose whatever they can afford that seems reasonable (an arbitrary term, by the way) for what they get ($20 for 10 days, 3000 impressions for $100, six column inches for a weekend @ $250, and so on).

….then they let it run its course and decide (again – arbitrarily) if it was worth it.

That’s not the way to advertise. It’s not the way to spend your hard-earned money on advertising.

In many cases a more effective way is to start small, do your research, validate and so on. Then Key & Track.

Now, a side note about validating: validating is a big subject but here’s some things go consider. For example, an classified ad in a newspaper has some things to check first. Newspapers always claim numbers for how many people you’ll reach with an ad. Frankly, in my experience, you can usually cut those numbers in half because they often count “papers printed” and call that a readership. That gives a false sense of value because they might print 200,000 papers a day but 30% of those remain unsold in at news stands (they line bird cages the next day), not everyone who subscribes to a paper reads the classifieds – some just want news, sports, living, etc. to read. So, when you’re deciding if $300 for a classified ad over the weekend to reach 200,000 people is worth it? …factor in you’ll probably be reaching far, far fewer people for that money.

This example is the point, which can hold true, for many mediums… online and offline medium. So, first things first – do your homework and make sure you know what/where/how your money is going for in an ad.

Okay, the keying and tracking is actually quite simple.

The easiest way to explain it is with an example. Remember watching commercials on TV or hearing ads on radio that direct you to “Ask for department “J” when calling?” Or, email “KevinThompsons@….?” Those were keyed and tracked ads (aka Kevin Thompson = KT = Keyed & Tracked). The advertisers are wanting to see how many emails ol’ Kevin got because they know that only radio stations in Las Vegas, Nevada ran ads with the email for Kevin. Ads on the radio on Denver, Colorado directed prospects to phone and ask for Daisy Conners, instead.

…it’s all a more sophisticated version of “where did you hear about us?”

It’s also effective to use two, identical promotions (say: the same banner ads on website “A” and more on website “B” and you want to see whether A or B was a better place to have your banners on). So, you create a unique link-to for the one website and another link-to for the other… but leave everything else about the banner the same… same duration, same graphic, same text, same launch date, etc. You want to see how many links the one site gives you over the other. If you have Statcounter or some similar tracking service in place you’ll be able to validate this even better.

…it’s all about seeing where your biggest bang-for-the-buck comes from – all things being equal.

For some, this is old news or a variation on what they already do. For others, this might be the first time you’ve thought about it. It can apply to print advertising as well as online, obviously. Newspaper, Google AdSense, Banner, Exchanges, etc. It’s all the same end-goal.

Old schoolers have some rules about keying and tracking – the least of which is all factors need to be identical except the one, internal device you use to distinguish one ad from the other. If website “A” generates more email inquiries to “Alan’s” email than does website “B” to “Bob’s” email… you have the beginnings of a keyed and trackable ad. You can now begin to test the effectiveness of those websites and how much one is worth spending your money on over the other. Remember, too, on the internet traffic is great – but sales often are more important. So, test how much money you make from A-versus-B not just traffic.

I key and track ads on small scale frequently for headlines and general content. I want to make sure that a print ad, a banner graphic, a text-only website ad, are the best they can be so I often run two, nearly identical versions on the same website and see which one brings me the best results. Once I tweak and do this routine a couple times I can be pretty confident I’ve got the best version I can. It’s at that point I can feel confident paying for more expensive, longer duration runs on larger websites. The last thing one wants to do is pay $500 for a graphical ad on BoingBoing (for example) and have it be the first time you’ve ever run that promotion. No, when you pay good money for a major ad on a major online service you want to know that it’s proven itself on other, smaller service – and it’s the best version of that ad you can craft. Keying and tracking help you do this with confidence.

If you found this little bit of information useful, please email “Bob Fisher” in department B. Thanks.