As an online merchant you must know where the best places are to get the best deal for your advertising dollars. Where can you target your advertising and make the most money?

   You can track the effectiveness of an email advertisement by creating a specific link for the advertisement that is only accessible to viewers of that specific ad. For example, I could use something such as http:://www.pertinent.com/emailad as a link from my advertisement to a specific page. There I can track it's effectiveness.

   Within any feedback or order form you could use a drop down box which list places that you've advertised. Simply ask your website visitors what path they took to get here. I have a few clients who have used Goto.com and Mamma.com for ad campaigns so those are 2 choices within their list box. The other obvious choices are Search Engines, Word of mouth, your newsletter or print ads.

   If you want to find out about where your competition is spending their ad dollars the above avenues would be great places to start. Please note that you won't know the effectiveness or their ad campaign and by following in their footsteps you've guaranteed yourself the same or similar experiences. They are abviously other factors such as, the quality of ad delivered, where was it placed, when [time of year] and to whom [target audience] the ad was directed at. The answers to the previous questions are left for a whole new article.

   Side note - search the newsgroups for your company or product to read what the general population is writing about you. You may also find that some employers advertise themselves in newsgroups under an alias for spam deterrent reasons. Deja.com is a great place to start your research.

Here's hoping your advertising dollars are well spent,
Chris McClean
Stay at home working father and internet strategist.