John Wanamaker, the US Department Store tycoon said,

'Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half'.

For our clients in Dubai and the UAE the issue about advertising effectiveness is also a big concern. Small companies need to advertise, just like the big companies. For most businesses that we work with the SME would have a monthly budget for online advertising that may include some or all of Google Adwords, Facebook or LinkedIn.

The beauty of online advertising is that you get feedback on the performance of your ad in real-time, and you can continuously tweak and improve the copy, layout or even budget until the leads are coming in. So how do we manage the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising within Salesforce? Here are a few tips that we know will help your business become more efficient in advertising immediately.

1. TOC (Target, Offer, Copy).

With online advertising you can select the audience that your ad is displayed to. Make sure that you don't waste money targeting prospects that are not ever going to buy from you. Look specifically at 'negative keywords' in Google Adwords to prevent this.

Think like the customer when it comes to the offer and copy; what kind of offer would make you click on a link? Very often companies talk about features of their product or service in their (limited) copy allocation, think instead of concentrating on the benefits of the product.

2. Test & Refine

Run multiple versions of the same ad (A/B testing) to experiment  with different copy, images and offers. After a short period of time you'll see that one these variations is out performing the others. Each media platform that you advertise on will have different results as the audience is different, for instance Facebook and LinkedIn tend to need different ad designs to attract high click rates

3. Use Landing Pages

Make sure that each ad has its own landing page so that when a prospect clicks on the ad they are redirected to a landing page that contains copy and images that resonate with the tone and copy of the ad. Having dedicated landing pages enables you to tract better the click through rate from the ad.

4. Set up Web to Lead in Salesforce

A free feature of salesforce is 'Web to Lead'. This is a simple piece of code that allows our customers to connect their landing pages or website contact pages with the 'Leads' in Salesforce. Whenever a prospect clicks through to landing page and then completes the contact information, this appears in your CRM as a new lead, with the 'Source of Lead' tracked and recorded.

The data that we record from the 'Source of Lead' then allows us to create reports and dashboards that show key metrics such as

• Volume of Leads per ad campaign
• Value of Opportunities per ad campaign
• Return on Investment per ad campaign