Using Landing Pages to Measure Advertising ROI

Q: My company runs advertising in our local newspaper, and we always put our Web address in the ads. Is there any way to tell if someone visits our Web site when they see our ad?

A. Have you ever heard the saying, “I know 50 percent of my advertising works, I just don’t know which 50 percent!” ? Consider using your Web site to help you get the answer by building a “landing page” to help you measure advertising response.

Simply explained, a landing page is a Web page that can only be reached by using a unique address that gets typed in by the visitor. You include that unique address in your ad, commercial or mailing, and then measure exactly how many people visit that page.

For example, perhaps you plan to run a Halloween special event at your shop. You run an ad in your local paper that tells readers they can find a coupon at a unique address: www.yourshop.com/halloween The “halloween” page is a special page, a landing page, you have developed only for that ad, which cannot be reached by linking from anywhere else on your site.

Once the visitor types that specific page address into his browser, your server’s statistics program will register a new visitor to that page, and you will know someone went to your Halloween page in response to that ad. As long as the page cannot be accessed by any other means (no links from anywhere else on your Web site), you will have an exact count.

Once the promotion is over, or a few days have passed since the ad was run, access your site statistics, and you’ll be able to measure whether the number of visitors to your site were worth the cost of running the ads or commercials.

What does it take to make all this work?

You’ll need to engage the services of your Webmaster to help you put all this together. Here are the steps you’ll need to take:

1. Make sure your hosting server can measure the visitors to individual pages on your site. If not, there are ways around that. Check out www.http-411.com for advice on making that work.
   
   
2. Develop your promotion, or design your ads or commercials. Ask your webmaster to put together a landing page, using a unique web address for the page similar to those listed above. Consider including a greeting such as, “Welcome Union Herald Readers”. Then include whatever information you promised them in your ad.
   
   
3. Make sure the landing page links TO your regular Web site homepage. Yes – even though you do not want the landing page linked FROM your site (because that will interfere with your measurement of your ad response), it’s a definite plus to send visitors to your regular homepage, proving them with an opportunity to learn more about doing business with you.
   
   
4. The content you include on the landing page is important because the stronger the impact when visitors get there, the more likely they will be to visit again when you try to measure for something else. Coupons, discounts, or other important information can help make that strong impact.

A Landing Page in Action

I’ve developed a landing page specifically for http-411.com, so you can see an example in action: www.http-411.com/OctoberSSA

You’ll find more information there, plus an opportunity to consult for free on building a landing page for your business. Check it out!

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