About 15 years ago, I spent around $450 or more per month on Google Adwords advertising for my pet sitting business without having a single clue if all that money was even bringing me one client per month. That is not a smart marketing strategy, and I wasted a ton of money.

You need to track the effectiveness of your paid advertising

With paid advertising, you have to get into the mindset of knowing that you need to track its effectiveness. If you find the advertising working, you’re going to put the same amount of money or more into that advertising. Otherwise, you’re not going to invest in that ad again. That’s the basics of it.

I learned this a long time ago from Dan Kennedy, one of the world’s marketing gurus. He’s got these fantastic books, the BS Guides To Grassroot Marketing, and The No BS Guide to Networking, and a whole list of them. They’re short, small, and easy to read.

If you don’t have any money to invest in yourself, or into a business coach, or a program, start here.

Understand whether the money you invest is returning to you

You need to have a direct response marketing to understand where every dollar you are putting out for your business is coming back to you.

For example:

Let’s say I run a Facebook ad, and I say, “Oh, I have this great pet sitting business.”

Then someone says, “Oh, that pet sitting business looks great. Let me click on this link.”

I’m just sending them to my home page. There is no way for me to know if they saw my ad on Facebook if they came to my home page and became clients. I’m just sending traffic to my website, having no clue if it’s converting or not.

Create a specific Call To Action for each ad

You need to understand I’m going to create this ad, and I’m going to make a specific call to action for this Facebook marketing campaign.

Let’s say, hey, Facebook audience that I’m targeting. I’m going to give you $25 off your first service order.

They click the link and go to a specific landing page. Then we’re going to see how many people got to the landing page and how many people gave me their first name and email to get the coupon.

Then you’re going to track the effectiveness. The potential customers gave me their first name and email address. How many of those people signed up to become a customer?

This is how you track the effectiveness of paid advertising.

Send the paid traffic to a specific URL created for the offer

It is the same thing for print advertising.

You don’t just want to say, Hey, come check out Pet Nanny, this excellent pet sitting business.”

You need to send them an offer. Go to this specific URL, petnannycoach.com.

If I’m doing print advertising in a specific magazine, I’ll know if somebody opens the magazine app and says, “Okay, I’ll go get that coupon.”

They clicked on the coupon and gave me their first name and email. They enter the marketing sequence and become a customer.

I can see then that the advertising is worth it.

Track your paid advertising’s effectiveness and conversions

How many people saw your ad and clicked on it?

How many people hit the landing page and gave you their first name and email address?

Out of that amount of people, how many people became customers, and then you tweak from there?

A lot of people see my ad, and no one’s clicking on it. Maybe try a new ad, a new ad image.

They’re getting to the sales page, but they’re not giving me their first name and email address. That means the offer and the page copy is not going to be great. Maybe change some of the wording, change the color of the submit button.

They’re getting into the sales sequence, but they’re not becoming customers. What do I need to change?

That’s how you become good at marketing and know every dollar you spend is coming back to you in the form of a customer. Otherwise, you’re just flushing money down the toilet, and we don’t want that.