When I first started marketing my products and services many years ago, I wasn't some genius that automatically knew every ad medium and every magazine that would be successful.  How could I?  No one does at first.  There was a lot of trial and error I had to go through for many years. 

 

Fortunately, YOU don't have to spend the years I did learning how all this works, guessing which ad mediums are outright scams, and which ones are a musts to increase your sales.  I spent over $1.2 million dollars and many years learning all of this, so you don't have to.   


Keep Your Initial Ad Campaign Lengths As Short As Possible

The most important part, or at least the first step, of an ad campaign is to test market the results.  I try to get the shortest length of time available for the campaign.  If it's an internet ad, I'll try to get a week or 10,000 impressions, something short and cheap.  The logic here is if you get NO SALES from a banner ad in a week, it won't be profitable for you in a month either.  So why should I want to pay $5,000 for a month's worth of banner impressions?  Of course there are exceptions.  If one sale a month pays for the entire ad campaign and more, obviously a one week test market will not really tell you anything.  But if you need several sales a week to turn a profit, and you don’t even get one after a week, you’ll get smashed over a month’s time or longer.

 

I don't care if I pass up multi-ad or multi-month discounts that the companies offer, and they will.  I have to see what my sales are going to be from the ad BEFORE I enter into any long term agreements.  Its smart business and it will save you a lot of money and heartache, regardless of what the sales rep tells you! 

 

Tracking Your Ads

You have to track your results in order to know your results.  This is common sense but many companies don't track their ad campaigns at all, or don't do it very well.  
 

Determining Your Results

Technically if you made $1 over the cost of your ad and other expenses, your ad campaign was profitable.  So how do you know how much profit is enough?  What makes a successful ad campaign?  Of course, first it has to be profitable to be successful.  After that, your ad budget is the deciding factor.  If it's unlimited, you can run any ad campaign that brings in sales of at least 20% over your overall costs.  But most business owners don't have the luxury of an unlimited ad budget.  So periodically you have to do an overview of all your ad campaigns and discontinue the weakest campaigns, then put the money you've saved into your top performing ad campaigns.  You have to always have most, if not all, of your monthly ad budget in the best performing ad campaigns.

 

Important Note: When you test market your ads and try to determine their success, be sure to factor in ALL costs involved.  When determining your product or service costs, don't forget to include possible building rent, storage space, employee costs, shipping material, among other costs.  Also, don't forget that situations and overall costs change each month.  The more you sell, the higher your expenses are when you need to hire more employees, need more room for stock, need more room to ship, etc.  You have to really think this through or somewhere down the road your finances will come up short, then you'll realize you're not making the amount of profit you thought you were.