Business Website Advice

An easy to use technique in internet marketing can tell you if your print ad is helping to increase traffic to your website. 

Target marketing in offline ads is the way to go so you can measure if your got the bang for your advertising buck. Easy. Learn how.

It’s easy to do by using a file name in the ad. Your ad runs. You check your website activity report (from your hosting service) and there in the Entry Page data is proof of the number of people your ad brought to your site. 

The file name is the part after the slash in the domain.  For example, let’s say you sell heating solutions.  In your ad you target the growing market of customers on eco products. You write your ad with a contact web address as  yourwebite.co.nz/eco_energy    

In this case, /eco_energy is the file name.  After the ad runs you will be able to check your website hosting stats to see a spike in the traffic to your website by checking to see how many visitors entered on the eco_energy page. 

If you don’t see numbers coming onto this Entry Page, it could be due to three things:

1. the ad was either in the wrong publication
2. the ad was pitched at the wrong target or product
3. the ad was poorly constructed

Guidelines for file names and their use.

1. Keep it simple since people have to type it in.  You are not relying on search engines here. You are testing the effectiveness of print ads. 
2. You can track the ad’s effectiveness by checking the Entry Page category on your hosting Activity Report for the month or 6 weeks following the ad.    

Works a charm and doesn’t tread too closely on incorrectly used multiple domains.

Multiple domains is sometimes used in more complicated target marketing campaigns.  I have yet to come across a micro business owners who is that energetic in their marketing. The dangers of using multipe domains incorrectly are severe so be careful if you attempt this more sophisticated internet marketing technique. 

Have you used file names in your print ads? Let us know how it worked for you.

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