Saamntha Olea asked:




Like most businesses today, yours is likely cutting back on spending and revising the budget. While advertising is necessary in order to gain a wider customer base, by nature it can be hit or miss at times. It is important to know what works and where it works which is why advertising tracking is a step that your business should not overlook.

Ad tracking is actually a pretty simple process and can be done in various ways. Below I’ve added my shortlist to get you started better understanding what ads are working for your company both on line and offline.

First, decide how exactly you want to track your visitors. There are many ways, but your basic options are:

- Read your web site’s server stats: Most hosts have a form of tracking built into your cPanel already so if you have cPanel access and are comfortable with this method, this may be the way to go for your web site.
-Find a free third party site meter: There are so many available, just do a search of free site meters, have your web designer put the code on your pages and you’re finished. Look for reviews before deciding on any particular site meter as some offer more detailed reports and others only track how many times a page is loaded and nothing more. The more information that you have about your site’s visitors, the better benefit to your business.
-Google Analytics: This is a free service from Google that many web site owners are finding helpful in tracking their web site’s visitors and where they are coming from. This service not only tells you where your visitors are finding your site online, but their geographical location, their length of stay on your site, their bounce rate and so much more. I suggest Google Analytics to all of my clients.

Next, have your web designer create a one page wonder or landing page for each ad placement in your campaign. A landing page is a page that is not directly linked to by the rest of your web site, and has a specific web address that is only mentioned during a specific ad placement. For instance, you are advertising your web site on a local real estate web site. You create a special page at your web address and give that address, not your main web address, to the web site so instead of yourwebsite.com, you would give them yourwebsite.com/realestate. Now, you may also be running an ad in the paper that week and you would have your web designer create a similar landing page and name it a unique file name that you use in the paper which may be something like yourwebsite.com/sundaynews.

At the end of the month when you notice that your sales are up, it will be easy to look into your tracking method and find out which page received the most traffic. This will help you better understand where your audience is and help you make sure that you are allocating your advertising budget in the way that helps your business the most.

Now, you may be asking, “Why can’t I just add one of those ‘Where did you hear about us’ boxes on my order form?”. You can, but remember that people may not always remember where they saw an ad especially if they just jotted down the web address and visited at a later time. Also, the faster you can get your customer to and through the check out process, the better. While you may notice a lot of companies going with the trend of data collecting through bugging their customers upon check out right now, I believe you will begin to see this trend fall off as people grow more tired of the ’20 question’ approach. Don’t give your visitors even the slightest reason to go else where, especially if by using the methods I have mentioned above you can find out not only where your visitors are finding you, but you will be getting a far more accurate response than you can ever expect to get by asking your visitors as they try their best to simply check out, pay you and move on.

Keep in mind that a well thought out and tracked advertising campaign can easily help you stretch your advertising dollar two and three times as far as you focus less on placement that does not gain site traffic and more on those placements that do.

Kansieo.com

Gennifer C. asked:




I recently decided to do some serious research on tracking
software for my Google AdSense program and was a little bit
surprised with the results.

There are several nice looking products out there, some of
which are available for free as open source programs while
others are for sale with a free trial or a money back
guaranty. A simple Google search for “adsense tracking
software” will keep you busy for hours.

There is, however, a problem with all of these options if
you are one of the many bloggers hosting your Google AdSense
ads on blogger.com or any of the other free blog hosts. You
will find that all third party software programs require
files to be loaded on the server. This issue alone excludes
them from use on your free blog.

For those bloggers using a free platform, the question
becomes, “How do I track my AdSense ads?”. Rest easy dear
friends. There is a solution. Granted, it’s not as slick or
simple as one of those cool self contained programs, and
this method will not produce quite as much data, but it is
free and it will work and it’s not overly complicated.

The first thing you have to do is take advantage of the
channels option when you set up your ad designs. It is a
very simple process to complete. After you have chosen the
size and colors of the add block, you will be asked to
“Choose Ad Channels”. Click “add new channel” and enter
a name for this new channel. I prefer to use a name that
describes the ad or referral link, such as “Top Banner”,
“Right Wide Tower”, “FF Referral”, etc. This way I can
easily recognize each ad block or referral in my reports and
gauge it’s performance. If you have multiple sites, be sure
to include a site prefix in each name. (“Dogs Right Link
Box”, Cats Left Referral Button”) For proper tracking, it
is necessary to go through this process for each ad unit,
link box, referral button, or text link.

Next go to Google Analytics. Get your account set up, then
install the javascript code into your template and wait for
the system to start gathering information. This process
takes overnight because the Google Analytics system collects
and compiles it’s data every 24 hours. When this data
starts to flow you will have plenty to look at for a while
until you decide exactly what is important to you. You can
dissect this information any number of ways including the
all important “Keywords” category and you can set up the
system to report multiple websites.

I also like to set up an account for each site over at Sitemeter.com.

One benefit to having the sitemeter account
is that it reports in real time instead of having to wait
until the next day for your hit count.

Now you have the ability to see exactly which ad units and
referral links are performing and which are not by checking
your AdSense report with channels. You can monitor the flow
of traffic through your site(s) including the referring URL,
keywords used, and tons more through Google Analytics. You
have a source for real time hit data with sitemeter. All of
which was free.

With these three tools in place you should be able to
generate all of the data you need to manage a successful
Google Adsense experience.

ad tracking

Lars Rohde asked:




With the growth of e-commerce, online marketing has become an inescapable tool for the e-companies. If you want to reach out to greater number of customers, you have to employ several online advertising tricks. But how can you know which of the online advertisements do really work and which of them don’t? The ad tracking program will help you to get familiar with the comparative worth of each online campaign. You can not do without this tracking mechanism, because you have to constantly experiment with the types and sources of advertisements to make them effective, that is drawing more and more traffic to your website, where customers can come to know about your product and also make some purchase.

How does the ad tracking mechanism work? To track performances of all your advertisements, you have to simply place the ‘tracking’ URL provided by the ad tracking program in your advertisement. When someone reads your ad on an ezine, say XYZ, and clicks on the tracking URL, which you have placed in this ezine, the visitor will be taken to your website and the ad tracking system will register that the click came from the XYZ ezine.

Now there are two types of ad trackers. The first is tracking software and the second is tracking service. The tracking software basically follows the mechanism described above. It helps you to generate specific web address for each campaign. In case you are using ad tracking software, the visitor can not directly go to your website. Instead their browser passes through a program installed in your web server, an additional counter is created for that address and then only the browser reaches your page.

The software will help you get all the stats via your browser any time with full details. With ad tracking software, it is possible to set up more than one tracker. Ad tracking software will help you to locate the ROI (return on investment) of your pay per click listings. It will also generate reports on the performances of the auto responders, exit pop-ups, article, affiliate, ebook and reciprocal links, and newsletter, banner and off-line ads.

Using software means one time investment. You have to install it once and it goes on rendering you services for years. You need to have some minimum technical knowledge to deal with its installation procedures. If you are not confident of installing it yourself, the software company can also install it in your website for a nominal fee. The tracking URLs carry your own domain name in case you are using an ad tracking software.

There are certain advantages of ad tracking software. If you are using software, you need not be dependent on another service provider company. Dependence on service provider may make you handicapped in certain events like when their site goes down or the company shuts off etc.
On the other hand, using software requires your site to provide several system resources like disk space for program and tracking files and so on. Then in case of program up gradations, the software needs to be re-installed once again.

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Mico Jonathan Ellison asked:




Like in other spheres of life, technology is making life easier for internet marketers as well. The phenomenal growth in development of apps to cater to a niche section has opened up a whole new world of opportunities for internet marketers. Using this software an internet marketer can magnify his exposure on the web, promote his website and make his web site search engine optimised.

Most of the good software comes with a price tag. The free ones are mostly useless. Also before buying software justify its need. There is no requirement to overdo these apps. A few basic apps will suffice all your need.

Based on my experiences some the much requires apps for a internet marketer include auto responders. This software helps you to keep in touch with your customers via regularly emails. You can program the frequency and content of each email.

Other useful software is Keyword Research Tool, Forum Managing Software, and Ad Tracking or Link Tracking Software. The keyword research tool helps you to optimise your site to the search engines. Search engines work in various algorithms. So having your site optimised for search engines will enhance visibility on web. To manage postings on various forums you can use one of the many forums managing software. They help you create cool links to post on forums.

An ad tracking tool tracks monitors everything about your website, numbers visited, which country, which is the search engine that give you most hits, which is your most preferred page etc. Using this software you will be able to enhance your software to suit customer needs.

There is one other apps which is necessary in the armamentarium of an internet marketer. To facilitate easy writing of sales letter you should get one of those automatic letter writing applications. This app will save you a lot of time from writing those monotonous letters. This time can be utilised by you to promote your business.

Driving traffic to your website is a time consuming affair! The key is to find products that reduce time and effort and produce the same results. Basically, you need to find software that manages your time effectively and increase productivity!

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Michael Helton asked:




If you’re like me, you welcome traffic to come to your website from any source but you would really want the traffic to be targeted to your specific product or service…especially if you’re paying for the traffic. So, in order for you to know where your traffic was coming from, you need a way to capture that information.

The major tool you need to do that is through ad tracking software. There are several tracking tools on the Internet. These trackers can supply you with enough valuable information, that after analyzing it, you should be able to tailor your ads for the source you’re advertising in. It’s very simple. All you do is ad a tracking code in the URL of the link to the website you want to track.

After you submit your ads with the special link and when people click on the link, the software will be able to compile that information which will not only tell you where the traffic came from, but one very important piece of information…if your ad was clicked on at all.

Here are some benefits of using ad tracking software.

1. You can set up as many different ad tracking codes as you want.
2. You can put the ad in several different places. The same ad that gets most of the clicks is the HOT spot. You may want to concentrate your advertising efforts in that ‘spot’ for a while.
3. You can split test your ad. This means that you can create different ads or headlines for the same product. The ad that gets the most clicks in this example is the ad you would want to use in other places. NOTE: You can save this ad, then modify it a little to use for marketing a different product.
4. You can test headlines.
5. You can test sales pages or OTO’s.
6. Test the ad in your AdWords campaign
7. Test a signature file
8. Test a forum post

The uses of a good ad tracking program is practically endless and is worth it’s cost in the advertising savings it will save you and the profits gained by applying your advertising efforts in all the right places with just the right copy.

Without applying an ad tracking program to all your advertising, you really don’t know where your traffic is coming from, how your ad copy is performing, or if you’re getting any clicks at all. You don’t know if they’re even interested in your product.

It makes sense that if you knew where your traffic was coming from, you would be striving to concentrate your advertising efforts and dollars in that area instead of some place that you’re not sure will give you the proper ROI.

Not all ad tracking programs are the same so it would be good for you to explore your options. When looking for ad tracking software, here are some things you might want to consider. You want a tracker that will;

1. Track your results in real time
2. Redirect links to expired affiliate programs
3. Win advertisers with tracking reports
4. Measure your readership
5. Not have to be installed on your server

No marketer should be doing any advertising, whether offline or online, without being able to compile stats that show the ads performance. That’s like leaving money on the table and throwing the rest of it away. Don’t do it the hard way.

ad tracking

Shelley Lowery asked:




Developing and implementing a strategic marketing plan is an essential part of your success. However, unless you’re testing and tracking your strategies, you may be losing a great deal of time and money.

You can 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 person 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. Below are some ad tracking resources to assist you in your testing and tracking endeavors.

Ad Tracking CGI Scripts

LnkinLite

http://www.dtp-aus.com/cgiscript/lnkinlte.shtml

If you’re looking for a simple way to track clickthroughs, then LnkinLite may be your answer. This free script will enable you to easily keep track of the number of clicks a specific link receives. Instead of using your standard link within your advertising, you can use a link created by this script. It will track the number of clickthroughs and instantly redirect your visitors to your URL.

Willmaster’s ProLinkz

http://www.prolinkz.com/

This powerful script is a link creator, tracker, disguiser and manager all in one. It will enable you to create uniquely coded links that redirect to any URL you specify and count all hits and referrers.

Cost – $45.00

AdTrackZ

http://www.adtrackz.com/

This script will enable you to set up an entire ad tracking campaign including statistical reports for referring URLs, what browsers your visitors have installed, what operating systems your visitors are using and much more.

Cost – $47.00

Ad Tracking Services

LinkCounter

http://www.linkcounter.com

A free service that tracks the clickthrough rates of your links. In addition to tracking your links, LinkCounter hides the URL of the link destination. This will prevent users from removing or changing your affiliate ID when visiting an affiliate site through your link.

HyperTracker

http://www.hypertracker.com

The PRO version of HyperTracker contains a number of advanced features including: unlimited advertising campaigns, tracking of sales and actions, special scripts that let you promote your own website address in your campaigns and much more.

Cost – Starting at $10.95 mo. They also offer a free version.

Adminder

http://www.adminder.com

An online tracking system that will enable you to track an entire advertising campaign. It will enable you to see how many visitors were generated by each of your ads, keep track of sales that were generated by each ad and calculates the cost-per-click, cost-per-sale, and click-to-sale ratios for each ad.

Cost – $19.95 mo. (for a limited time)

Statcruncher

http://www.Statcruncher.com

Statcruncher tracks and reports exactly which ads, banners and links are producing results. They provide you with access to their powerful web-tracking system that will enable you to track your ad campaigns 24 hours a day in real time.

Cost – $49.00 yr.

If you’d rather not use any of the products and services listed above, you can use some alternative methods. Below are some example tracking methods you can use to track your response rates:

URL

You can track your ads simply by adding some special coding to your URL. To code your URL, add a question mark followed by a special tracking code to the end of your web address. Your coded link will still open your web page. Your code should look something like this:

[http://www.yourdomain.com/?ad1]

The text after the question mark should identify a specific ad. You can code it however you’d like.

To view your results, you’ll need to look at your log files. Your code will be displayed within your log files beside your URL.

Email

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

Testing and tracking your strategies is an essential part of doing business. By concentrating your efforts on strategies that produce results, you can not only increase your sales, but you’ll also save yourself a great deal of time and money.

Kansieo.com

Igor Griffiths asked:




Affiliate marketing is a great online business that can earn you lot of money but it takes lots of determination, hard work and perseverance from the marketer. If you are not serious with your affiliate program, I am afraid you would not be able to succeed in it.

A solid base and foundation is necessary for any business and the same is the case of the affiliate marketing business. If you don’t establish a proper base you would not be able to succeed in any affiliate program, no matter how brilliant it is. The banners and links for decoration purposes are just not enough. An affiliate is required to use techniques that convince visitors to click on the links and the banners. Once they click them they will be taken to the company page from where they can make a purchase.

If your planning is extra ordinary nothing can stop your affiliate program from getting success. Choosing the correct product and enhancing your website with engaging banners and the right material are major keys to making things happen.

Now let us talk about ad tracking, ad tracking is a great software tool that allows a webmaster to monitor every click made by visitors through your referral funnel. Ad tracking software is not cheap so if your business is very small you can use online service providers instead of the software but if your business is doing well I recommend you make a purchase of dedicated ad tracking software.

The ad tracker allows you to manage offline advertisement and monitoring of the progress of your campaigns effectively. This tool is really useful for you if you have multiple affiliate accounts.

Decision making is important in every business and decisions should be based on facts and figures. Ad tracking allows you to generate traffic reports for your sales page that is personal to you. So the two things one should have in order to carry out a perfect online business are knowledge and an ad tracking software program. The initial steps of an affiliate marketing business are not easy but once you start making money you will be glad that you started the business. All your efforts will soon be returned back in the form of dollars, if you show full consistency and seriousness with your program.

Kansieo.com

Lacey Meyers asked:




Harvey Segal is probably best known for his product and ebook Guru Magic. However, he is an established guru himself in the technique of niche marketing. Harvey Segal is also the owner of multiple portals that promote his products. His main sites are ad-tracking and supertip sites.

About Harvey Segal’s Sites

Harvey offers people seeking work at home opportunities through their own online business, a chance to make it in the cyber world of business. In order to do this he has set up two sites and offers people the opportunity to join as affiliates to the various programs. The site Supertips also has some great internet marketing strategies that can be customized to fit all online business products and services. Ad-tracking is a site that allows affiliates to track their online advertisements and the performance of their publishing programs.

If you search some of his accomplishments you will find Harvey Segal’s 101 Super Tips Internet Marketing Course. It was sold out almost as soon as it hit the web. He has come a long way in the work at home online businesses. He has created winning affiliate programs for people who would like to make lots of cash online.

Mr. Segal’s ebook is his latest venture. This is a rich compilation of internet marketing strategies and thought processes of many a successful and very famous internet marketing business men. Before this, he had written and published an ebook titled ‘The Super Tips Book On Internet Marketing’. This was another book that sold off cyber store shelves like hot cakes.

If you have heard of Clickbank, you must know that he is one of the greatest experts in this area. He has a clickbankguide site that tells all about the Click bank program. Such is the heights of success that he has achieved, that rather than going to the official site, people flock to his clickbank forum called clickbanksuccessforum, to get the latest information on how to make money online using clickbank.

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Sean W Supplee asked:




1. Ad Tracking – Using it to Test Your Results Most advertising services, such as Google AdWords, permit you to track your ads. You can see how many click-throughs you receive; and you can split-test two ads with slightly different wording. Tracking your results will allow you to compare two approaches, so you can determine which works best.

2. Adding Articles to Directories One good way to generate traffic for your site is to write articles and then submit them to directories. This will not only get your site a one-way backlink that will improve your search engine position rankings, but it will also generate some direct, click-through traffic.

3. Adding Your Blog to RSS Feed Directories Another good way to generate traffic for your blog is to list your RSS feed in directories. This will have a similar effect as adding your articles to directories.

4. Adding Your Site to Link Directories Another good way to get inbound links pointed at your site is to submit it to directories. When you do this, remember to include a description of your site that links keywords that you are optimizing for. This text will surround your link; and will improve your search engine rankings for these keywords.

5. Adopt a Strategy Many Internet marketers go into a new business venture without first spending the time to create a strategy. This is usually a big mistake. Without creating a strategy that specifies what you should do in various situations, you may find yourself lost; and prone to ad hoc and inconsistent decision-making.

6. AdWords – A Trick That Can Boost Your Click-Through Rate If you want to improve your AdWords click-through-rate, you should use the base keyword from your keyword list in your headline. When people search for a keyword on your list, it will pull up your ad with the keyword bolded in the headline. This will attract searchers to your ad, increasing the chance that they will click on it.

7. AdWords – Tracking Your End Results is Crucial In addition to tracking your ad click-through rates, you will also want to check how your ad results translate into sales. You can do this by sending traffic from different campaigns to different landing pages. This will allow you to do determine whether certain ads are generating higher-quality traffic.

8. AdWords – Using the Right Headline Could Change Your Campaign After you begin tracking your results, you will want to start varying your AdWords headlines. You can then test how well each different headline performs; and then select the best for your campaign. Remember to only make small changes at a time.

9. Affiliates Can Make or Break a Business One of the best ways to grow your business rapidly is to find affiliates. Affiliates can act as an extension of you by marketing your product in places and in ways that you could not think of yourself.

10. Affiliate Managers May be Necessary Once you have grown your affiliate program substantially, it will begin to take up an increasingly larger share of the amount of time you spend on your business. Beyond a certain point, it will be a good idea to consider hiring an affiliate manager to do this work for you. This will free up your time, so that you can spend it doing other, more productive things.

11. Affiliate Marketing Software – Using it to Save Time In the past, affiliate marketing was much harder than it is today. Today, you can take advantage of a variety of different software programs to automate tasks for your program. This includes things such as creating ids, tracking sales, and making payments. This can save you a great deal of time and money.

12. Affiliate Products Can Supplement Your Product Sales Some of the most successful Internet marketers mix revenue streams. Not only do they sell their own products, but they also sell other business’s products as an affiliate. If you want to maximize your own profits, you should consider selling high-quality products as an affiliate.

13. Attitude is Important It may sound like a silly piece of advice, but attitude is truly important when it comes to Internet marketing. As you grow your business, you will find yourself encouraging more and more challenges. If your attitude is good, you’ll stick with your choices and find the courage to get through them; if not, you’ll find yourself quickly folding.

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Michael Mize Russell asked:




AdWords management is incomplete without tracking the performance of AdWords marketing campaign launched by you. Find out information about how to keep track of the AdWords performance for clean AdWords management.

Investing in AdWords marketing campaign is one of the best strategies to expose your website to targeted audiences. However, it is important to manage the AdWords campaign and one of the important aspects of AdWords management is to keep the track of AdWords performance in different possible ways. By opting for various AdWords performance tracking methods, one can add value to AdWords management for bringing in right modifications. Here are few tips to help you in this direction.

Conversion Tracking

Google offers a free AdWords performance measurement tool in the form of conversion tracking. In a general sense, conversion tracking refers to the number of customers an ad brings for the business. One can learn to monitor the conversion tracking during the AdWords training program. By keeping track of the number of conversions, one can give higher priority to the ads that have been capable of adding good number of customers to the business.

Keywords Tracking

Keywords play significant role in enhancing the success rate of AdWords marketing campaigns. As it is important to target different keywords and phrases, it is equally important to track the performance of each keyword. By evaluating the performance of each keyword, you can make more use of those keywords that have been repeatedly used by the customers to visit your website and make a purchase.

Views Per Important Pages

Keep track of the pages of your website that are more frequently visited by the visitors through AdWords campaigns than other pages. This will help you to make the regularly visited pages more useful for the visitors. At the same time, this will help you to improve other pages of the website so that they can also be made more visible through AdWords ads.

Some Other Useful Tips

You can also create and track the pages like ‘Thanks for your purchase’ and ‘Thanks for contacting us’ to keep track of how many visitors contacted you through AdWords ads.

An AdWords tracking page can also be created for the users who sign-up with your websites or the newsletter subscription service.

By following above-mentioned AdWords tracking methods, one can actually keep track of the most important entity and that is returns on investment in AdWords.

Kansieo.com