Many professional carpet cleaners do not have real metrics on how their advertising dollars are working.  Sure, most can say they are getting much of their work by this type of advertising, or that type of advertising.  However, to most, this is just a “gut” call based on feelings.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to calculate exactly how much revenue a particular advertisement brought in?  You don’t need a complex system to make this work.  Simply ask the customer “How did you first hear about us?”  This simple little question should be part of every business’ vocabulary.  The next step is to write the answer down.   These are the first steps in tracking your advertising.

Now, you have data from your calls.  If you use Quickbooks or some other accounting software, simply put the answer to the question in some trackable field (ie. PO # field – use codes like “PC101” – this stands for Postcard # 101).   By tracking, you can run reports to give you the sales by this PO #.  If you don’t use accounting software and do everything by hand, you can sum up the totals for each week and keep a running total.  Or, you can put the information into a spreadsheet and let it do the calculations for you!

Again, there are many ways to track your Return on Investment (ROI) in advertising.   By tracking, you can now find what works and what doesn’t.  This type of analyzing is invaluable to your business.  Remember, it all starts with “How did you first hear about us.”