There are plenty of options for advertising online, but measuring if your advertising is working is remarkably over looked in an extraordinarily high number of cases. The reality is there are some straight forward steps you can take to get the success or failure rate of your advertising. If you are ready to get serious about analyzing your ROI, then here are some suggestions to get you started.

To start with lets look at some statistics about popular means of online advertising. In a survey by Active Media Research, businesses were asked to nominate their preferred methods of online promotion. The results are as follows.

o 49 percent utilized Search Engines and Directories

o 22 percent opted for Button Links

o 18 percent submitted online Press Releases

o 17 percent placed Reciprocal Ads & Links

o 10 percent implemented Affiliate Programs

o 6 percent paid for Banner Advertising

The stand out thing about this is that a high number of organizations are simply not following through in researching how effectively these promotions are working.

To start measuring online advertising success you should begin by determining precisely why you are running a campaign, and what you are hoping to get out of it. Without this first step, it will be impossible to determine if the campaign is achieving results. Start out by making sure that you have clear goals, and set criteria for each individual to focus on, as well as Key Performance Indicators also known as KPIs. It is important to do this so that you achieve a unified approach to your advertising campaign.

To measure the KPIs, a good option is to establish a baseline to measure from. If you have already had previous promotions that you can use for this thats great, if not then over the first few months/weeks of the new campaign you can work on collating information to establish this.

The next step to take is to work out the framework for which you wish to run your campaign. As outlined above, there are a number of options for how to place your advertising, what you are trying to work out now is what particular attributes you want to utilize for your particular advertising. These attributes will most likely include elements such as message, creative input, placement and publication. To run this successfully you may well have to look at outside resources, depending on the depth and scale of your campaign. This is where advertising professionals or agencies may be of some use to you.

Lastly work on reporting and analyzing on your KPIs. Implementing some sort of rating system will mean that you are able to view the results of the campaign quickly and simply. Depending how large a campaign your running, you may wish to conduct your first report within a few hours or a few days of the launch of your advertising. When you are reporting regularly then you can remain on top of fluctuations in the market place, and you will have a strong campaign that has clear goals and outcomes that it is measured against.

You will learn more about your customers and the marketplace, as well as achieve the results you wish to by following these simple steps. Fine tuning your advertising efforts and conducting regular reporting will enable you to clearly understand your ROI. Advertising should be approached as a process that requires development and ongoing refining. Implemented well a few simple reporting processes and analysis practices will allow you to achieve your advertising goals.