I hear this all the time from local vendors. It's frustrating, isn't it. You spend your hard-earned money on advertising and no one ever mentions that they saw it. Is it working, or isn't it?

Well, my friends, you've hit upon one of the great conundrums of marketing. Whether someone mentions your ad is not an indication of whether it's working or not. It's only an indication of whether they need to mention it to receive any special benefit or treatment. In other words, if you don't tell them to mention it and why, they're not going to.

Just saying "Tell us you saw our ad in…" isn't going to work because there's no consequence, positive or negative attached to it. It's not a strong call to action because there is no benefit to them. Sure, you want to know, but they don't care.

The other main thing to keep in mind is that your customers are people, just like you and I. When is the last time you mentioned to someone that you saw their ad when there wasn't a coupon or special offer attached? Probably not often, if ever. Why should you? If you don't get any benefit, you're just going to call, or go into that business and talk about you and what you want from them.

Sales tracking is important to the store, not to you when you're the consumer. Why should it be any more important to your customers? It shouldn't and it isn't. Yes, as I said, it's frustrating, but if you really want to know if your ads are working, then you have to do the leg work. They're not going to volunteer it.

So, how can you know if your ads are working? Here are 3 ideas for effectively tracking your ads. This applies to print, online, direct mail, radio, TV or wherever you're advertising.

1. Use a coupon or special offer that they have to bring in order to receive the value. Make sure there is an expiration date, not too far out, to increase the sense of urgency. I know that most of you don't like the idea of coupons or offers, but they call these "Direct Response Vehicles" for a reason. You will get a direct response to know if you get them back, they worked, and if you don't they didn't. Of course if they don't come back it could be indicative of other problems (bad or irrelevant offer, problem with delivery of the message, etc.). If you're going this route, the less strings attached to the offer, generally, the better the response.
2. Since they are most likely to call you before they come in, the best time to track is when they first call you, not when they come in to your store.

Once they come in all they will care about is their needs, so don't expect your in-store marketing survey to yield accurate results. How would you feel if you went into a store and the first thing you had to do was take a test? That's the way it feels to them. If you were the customer and you wouldn't like it, don't expect that they will.

Very Important Tip: You get the answer to the question you ask, so ask "Where did you get our phone number today?" instead of "How did you hear about us?" Asking how they heard about you makes them think of the first time they heard that you existed, but that didn't make them call you today… now… at 2pm on a Tuesday. You want to know what flipped the switch on that light bulb over their head. You want to know what triggered them to call you NOW. Sure, they may have heard about you before, even seen your ad multiple times, but something made them want to call you now. Ask a better question and you'll get a better answer.

3. Use a different phone number, email address or URL in each ad. This is an old Yellow Pages trick. If you can track how many phone calls come in to the phone number, you can see how many calls you got from that ad. You can get different toll-free numbers and your web master can set you up with multiple email addresses and URL's. You see these all the time on infomercials on TV. The department number you see in the ad, or the phone extension indicates to them where you saw their infomercial.

A twist on this is a marketing trick a limo customer of mine used many years ago. He would put a call to action in his ad something like this "Call Charlie today to discuss your wedding transportation needs, 555-1234". The trick was that there was no one there named "Charlie". He would simply change the name in each ad and when someone called and asked for "Charlie", "Phil", "Tony" or "Barry" he would know which ad they were calling from. He didn't have to ask. Then he would note which name they asked for and simply say "Charlie just stepped out, but my name is Dave and I can help you."

Was it sneaky? Sure, but it didn't hurt anyone as they always got to talk to someone about what they needed... and he got the information he needed unobtrusively.

Lastly, everyone who has contact with your customers has to be on board if you're going to accurately track your marketing efforts. They have to understand why it's so important to get good feedback. If they don't, they will quickly derail your efforts and you'll be back where you started… or worse, you'll think you are getting good feedback and you're not. So, don't just tell them what to do, they them why and why it's so important. Get them to buy in to the effort.

So, how do you really know if your ads are working? If business is better when you run them than when you don't. It can be as simple as that.