Determining what is a successful marketing technique for any business can be challenging. Most businesses don’t have good tracking methods in place to measure ROI/ROO. Those that do, tend not to use them properly, if at all.

How then do you determine where your prospects and new customers are coming from?

The best way is to ask them and then make note of the answer. It can be a piece of paper on a clipboard where you make tally marks next to the appropriate marketing source or an Excel spreadsheet or in your CRM, or some other way you've developed to keep track of how your prospects and new customers heard about you.

Of course, it won’t work if you don’t actually use it. That means your staff needs to be trained to ask the question, “How did you hear about us?” Then, they have to know how and where to keep track of those answers. Then, they have to be held accountable for doing it.

The most simplistic method is a grid showing all your different marketing avenues with a space for tally marks next to each category. If you have paid advertisements in multiple papers, TV stations, websites, radio stations, etc…, then each one should have it’s own line so you know which are successful and which are not. You can ask for specifics or you can put a different code into each ad asking people to mention it when calling.

You can tally by category only, or you can drill down to specific dates, days of the week and/or time of day.

Don’t forget that signage is a marketing tool – for some businesses, the signage on their building is their most successful marketing tool!

Once you know which of your marketing strategies are working, you can up the ante on those and/or tweak/eliminate those that are not producing what you think they should. That will allow you to put your marketing resources into those areas that are the most productive for you and maybe even try out something you haven’t before.

And don’t stop tracking. Things change and will cause your marketing results to change along with them.