Winning Online

Click-through rates, unique visitors, web page overlay… all measurements of beauty in the online world.   If only they had Google ad words and referrers for the offline world.  When offline advertising is driving people online, or even to a 1-800 number – how do you know you are successful?

Although not completely scientific, there are some tactics that work – proximity, deduction and micro-tracking.
Proximity – This is the most obvious one.  When you can directly track an increase in web traffic to a major commercial release such as a super bowl ad.  Although this is not the case for most companies, there is still a certain amount of certainity that can be attributed to this technique if a campaign starts solely offline and can be tracked as such.

Deduction – This tactic is used when a company has ongoing campaigns that are mixed between a variety of offline tactics. This makes it difficult to point to any particular dates  - such as a campaign launch.   Much like you would develop a constant to measure the variables in a scientific experiment, the goal would be to create and/or look for periods where there is an occassional broadcast hiatus, or when spending is down.  This way a baseline of web activity is established and other weeks can be judged against it.

Micro-tracking – This is the most accurate way to track the success of an offline campaign.  It works by the company creating a unique URL like – www.cameras.com/2for1 or www.2for1cameras.com.   The URL is then inserted into any billboard, print material, or commercial (perhaps even a URL for each one).   Unique visitors are then tracked and we have what I like to say “action impressions” – not just how many people saw the billboard but a more accurate guage of how successful an advertising hook is.

For more information, check out this article from Ad Week:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/community/columns/other-columns/e3i7d4936f8e5dd3cf62811e5491a524869