In today’s marketing world, tracking and evaluation are important. For years, marketing was seen as an expense. However, with the increased use of the Internet for commercial purposes, managers and executives expect data to know what they’re getting for their money.

So, in my opinion, to advance your marketing career these days, it’s better to take a proactive stance in terms of tracking marketing campaigns and evaluating the results when budgeting for the future.

There are plenty of ways to do this — dedicated phone lines to monitor inbound calls, landing pages specific to pay per click campaigns or offline advertising, and CRM software, to name a few. 

I used to think that tracking and evaluation eventually lead to boring, tired, and pre-fab marketing.

My outlook on that has been changing lately. 

Now, I’m thinking that the tracking can be subtle and just needs to planned for prior to implementing new campaigns and tactics.

I’ve seen some great offline ad campaigns with definitive
tracking built-in through calls to action andLogo_jenny_craig dedicated resources (1-800
numbers, dedicated Web sites that tie into the campaign, etc.).

* If you’re confused at how tracking can be  built into specific tactics, think 1-800-97-Jenny.
   www.jenny97.com,  etc.

So, let me be clear. Just because you’ve established marketing methods that work, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take risks. In fact, I think increased tracking, in the right organizations, can allow you to take
more risks. If you can ballpark ROI of past tactics, you can make your case for trying out new tactics and programming with your audience — just have some metrics in place before launching the new components.