Review Media Plan In New Year

Reflections on the way media used to be

The New Year is supposed to be a time of reflection, right? A time to look back at accomplishments and failures, and think about how to start the new year on the right foot.

Reviewing the success of your media spend for the year is very important. Yes, you most likely have done your budget allocations for this year already, but it’s not too late to make a change (unless you’ve signed contracts you can’t get out of - though most people I have spoken to aren’t even close yet).

Analytics identify prime traffic sources

How are you measuring the effectiveness of your media spend? Google Analytics is a great way to do that.   The traffic sources tab is where I spend most of my time, looking at where people are coming from and what they are clicking on to get to my site.  By using their URL builder tool you can see what sites, ad sizes and creative are generating the most traffic.

If you bought ads on multiple networks and sites last year, this can help you determine which sites (or network) drove more traffic to your destination website, which you can use to help allocate your spend for 2010.  Make sure those conversion pixels are placed, too.  Those are imperative for measuring results and making sure your spend is worth it.

Pay per call connects the disconnected

Another great way to measure results is phone calls (pay per call).  The vendor I work with for search engine marketing offers, at no extra charge, a 1-800 number that you can use to track phone calls (keep in mind that not everyone will click through from an ad).  One destination that we work with received over 200 calls in a three month period.  Some vendors record the call, allowing you to go in at a later time and review the call, find out what they were interested in, what they bought and assign a dollar value. 

There are companies out there, such as Marchex, which can generate unique telephone numbers for use in whatever medium you would like.  This works well with a search campaign, but can also help you track print, radio and television campaigns, without someone having to remember a long, unique URL to get to your website.  As pay per call becomes more popular and as more vendors offer it, we could see print advertising make a comeback (for a little more insight on pay per call, check out this article from Media Post.

Refine media plans for a more profitable new year

So, destination marketers, it’s time to analyze and declutter that media buy and start the new year off on the right foot – and maybe add some new innovation into the mix.