Measuring Success

According to Direct Marketing News, 20% of business to business marketers don't measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Business to business marketing centers around selling a service or product to another company. For example, Xerox would sell its copiers to other businesses. It would make sure to highlight how having their copier would be a better choice than a competitor's copier.

Not for Xerox, but still B2B

I found this especially surprising, as I would have thought that everyone measures campaign effectiveness to some extent. While b-2-b marketing is much different than standard b-2-c (business to customer) marketing, it is still important to know if your advertising is working.

There are several different ways to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign. Something as simple as tracking sales before, during and after a campaign can help you better spend your advertising budget. Most websites now can track from where and how many visitors come to the site. Offering media-specific incentives can also track where customers are coming from. There is a more complete list of measuring ad effectiveness here.

Many of the options on that list apply more to b-2-c advertising than anything else. When advertising specifically to customers and end users, it is much easier to track sales. Asking customers when they visit the store, using specific phone lines for orders and print coupons can all measure the amount of new sales generated by an ad campaign.

What is the importance of tracking these sales statistics? What other ways can companies measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign, especially for b-2-b companies?