Successful marketing today is an art...not a science. However, using science to test, track and evaluate your marketing campaigns is a smart thing to do! Over the years, it's become far easier than ever to review and analyze what works and what doesn't. It's going to all vary based on your product, service, season, audience you target, money you invest and many other variables. Nevertheless, even small campaigns can be set up to show measurable results!

For example, if you are selling tickets to an event and you choose to use digital ads to promote it, why not create a URL tracking code to see which outlet people are using to click  through to purchase the tickets. Google Analytics has a great way to track specific advertising campaigns if you take the time to create a code and share it with your media outlet.

Scrutinizing Google Analytics overall is a great way to analyze marketing campaigns as well as they are well aware the importance of understanding your audience's location, age, sex, interests and more.

However, print campaigns still do work (newspapers, magazines, etc.) and although you can't track via Google Analytics, you can set up your ticket check out page so  that the ticket buyer has to indicate where he or she heard about what they're buying. If you choose a newspaper that also does an article, you may want to have two choices for the buyer with both ad or article choices.

When people contact your organization, be sure to ask how they heard about it, too and get your staff involved in this as well.

In my experience, it takes MANY impressions to make an impression in this busy world so realize that the information provided by consumers may be skewed especially if you're implementing a multi-pronted campaign. In fact, if your budget allows, you should consider advertising on social media platforms, television, radio and print media. Retargetting and geofencing are newer strategies to master so you can become a more savvy digital advertising.

You should build a spreadsheet to review before you buy your next ad campaign! Then, test again and see what work and what doesn't. Your budget is limited so testing, tracking and evaluating is an effective way to market.

So, test, track and evaluate and go forward with both art and science and create winning marketing campaigns!