Once you’ve figured each of these costs and added them together, you’ve successfully calculated your cost for one newspaper ad. From there, the next step is determining how many sales were generated by the ad. Or if you’re playing the long game, you can also determine how many clients it’s responsible for adding to your roster.
Admittedly, this figure is probably the hardest of all the figures to calculate . With offline ads, tracking can be difficult. One option is to put in a phone number or URL that is unique to that ad. This will enable you to accurately track the calls and site visits you get from this specific ad. Another less accurate option is to ask customers where they heard about you or your business, or to incentivize them to mention the ad when they reach out to you.
Whatever type of ad you use, don’t forget to include a mechanism (e.g. custom phone number, unique URL) for capturing their responses before you start the campaign. Otherwise, you’ll constantly be playing catch-up and will inevitably have an inaccurate count.
When you are conducting a purely digital campaign, your options for measurement are much easier and can be automatically tracked through both your online ad partner and your website metrics. It’s still important, however, to include the other costs for the campaign (e.g. hours spent) to get a full picture of your return on investment.