If you have been in business for any length of time at all, you have probably tried a little bit of everything to get the word out about you business. It can be very frustrating at times when you sit and wonder at the impact you have made (or haven't made) on your target audience. If you ran an ad in the local newspaper, for instance, it may have sold ten thousand copies the day your ad ran but you have no way of knowing who read it, who even saw it, what they thought about it or anything else.

The only measuring stick you have to gauge the effectiveness with is in how many direct calls you got from it. The same scenario plays out for radio and television advertising as well. Not much feedback to go on there. Nothing nags at us as much as the knowledge that something is amiss but not knowing exactly what it is.

The key to getting the desired response from your target audience is as much in what they want as in who they are. That may be the factor separating you from a sale. So, not being mind readers, how can we find out what our target audience is interested in? It is not as hard as you might think. You simply marry your article marketing program with your email advertising campaigns.

Here is how it works in a nutshell:

You write and distribute a good consistent supply of articles relevant to your product or services. Have the links on your article point to a page on your site that offers them some incentive for registering, say a free ebook, whitepaper or a newsletter. Make sure this is an opt-in offer and extend them a right of refusal that sends them on to your site's home page. You don't want to appear pushy. Scatter several more opportunities around your site to opt-in to registration. If they opt-in, you now have an email address to do follow-up marketing. If they don't, then at least they have your name on their minds and may return later.

One way to ensure a return visit is to keep good, fresh relevant content in front of them, both on your site and in your email newsletters or advertising campaigns. There are several state-of-the-art technologies that allow you to track which articles sent them to your site to start with, what pages they visited while they were there, the open-ratio for email newsletters, the click-through ratio for the links in your emails as well as general demographic information. You can take it even further and use capabilities that allow you to "look into" your site and actually follow your visitors from page to page and even initiate a one-on-one dialogue with them. You are limited only by your own imagination.

Not only do you pinpoint your target audience in this way but also know better where to seek them out and what type of content entices them to visit your site. Gear your articles to that end. Give them what they want and they will return again. Return visits convert to sales. Like the old saying goes, "If you hang around a barber shop long enough, sooner or later you're going to get a haircut."