Tracking Every Scrap Of Your Advertising With 0800 Numbers

Using a different 0800 number on every advert allows companies to accurately assess the success or failure of their marketing campaigns argues Director of DBS Telecoms David Clarke. 

Research and evaluation of the performance of an advertising campaign is vital to the success of any business. However, it can prove to be a costly exercise if carried out by a "trial and error" method. David Clarke of DBS Telecoms suggests a cost effective and precise method of measuring the success of your marketing efforts.

“Knowing with precision where your marketing efforts are succeeding is a major step towards the profitability of a business. Imagine having the information at your fingertips that tells you exactly which adverts are working and which are failing. Knowing which adverts are succeeding allows you to focus your resources and efforts, whilst knowing which ones are failing means you can stopping wasting finances and productivity. It allows you to be much more efficient and successful as a company, especially in these tough economic times when every company, however big or small, is trying not to throw money away. This is all achievable by the use of 0800 numbers.”

The way it works is simple. Businesses need to assign a unique 0800 number to each individual advert and then harvest the data that any reputable telecoms provider will give to them. If you use an 0800 number in an advert and it doesn't appear anywhere else in the world then at the end of the month when you analyse your call data then you will know with 100% accuracy how many enquiries your advert has generated. The call data usually accompanies your invoice but it may be also available online.

So, for example, if you place an advert in a magazine, you assign one particular 0800 number to that ad. You place another in a newspaper and assign a different 0800 number to that. A third ad goes in a directory, and again you assign a different 0800 number to that. All of these numbers are pointed at the same phone, so it doesn’t affect your day to day business, but each one is unique to a different advert. As David Clarke says, it is highly simple yet highly effective, and 100% accurate. Even if the number has been passed to the customer by a friend, they still found it via that unique advert.

You can drill down on the data even further and calculate invaluable cost per enquiry data. To do this you will need to determine the monthly cost of the advert and divide it by the number of calls received. For example, let's say the monthly cost of an advert is £50 and 10 calls are received on the 0800 number displayed. Your silky maths skills will tell you that the cost per enquiry is £5. This is a great way of measuring how well one media measures against another.

The success of this marketing method is compounded by the fact that 0800 numbers appeal much more to a potential customer as they are free to call.

Using 0800 numbers wisely will therefore help your company cut back spending on unprofitable adverts which will then free up marketing budget to be spent elsewhere.