It is okay if you try and fail - it is NOT okay if you try and fail and don't know you failed. That happens when you advertise and can't track the result. Ever done that? You can't improve your marketing unless you know what doesn't work. It is as important to know what doesn't work as it is to know what does work.

Repeat after me...your are not Ford, ATT or Proctor & Gamble. They spend millions of dollars on brand oriented advertising without attempting to retrieve a dollar from the specific ads. You can't. They can afford to build a brand. You can't.

When you advertise, you must at least attempt to generate sales dollars and have a way to track the results. If it doesn't result in sales and you know it...then you have hopefully learned something. If it doesn't result in sales and you don't know it...how have you benefited? You haven't.

Design every marketing thrust, every advertising program (print, Internet, telemarketing, etc) with one thing in mind...results you can measure. Every marketing communication should include this. Even your business card! Yes - even the lowly business card can include a sales message with the ability to track response. It must be this way. You can not leverage your marketing dollars to its highest value unless you have marketplace intelligence gained by tracking prior advertising results.

How can you take the $1,000 you invested in an advertising program that turned into $2,000 of sales and make it bring in $5,000 or even $10,000 in sales if you don't have measurable results and can continually tweak and test?

It is a simple fact that the greatest leverage a business has is marketing leverage. If you can take the same dollar spent marketing and create 10 or 20 times the yield it normally does - where can you find that type of leverage. Not financially, not via employees...not anywhere.

But before you can make the magic of marketing leverage work for you, you need to develop your marketing systems so that you are informed as to what marketing creates what sales.

Let's show you an example...

Here is the front of a business card for our private label cigars as offered
by our sister company, Fletcher Cigar Company:

Nice Card? Yes. Has all the information a business card should have. Clean design. Okay - not bad. But...does it do anything to create sales? No. So first things first - that needs to be corrected. Now...let's look at the back of the card:

Ahhh...now we're talking! Now we have some marketing going on. First, the back of the card transforms the card into a sales vehicle. And second, it transforms the card into a discount card which will be kept a lot longer than a normal business card. And third, "mention this business card" provides us with...
MEASURABLE RESULTS

Measurable results allows you to instantly know where the inquiry and the sale comes from.

Three easily learned and implemented points from the above...

1. Transform all of your marketing messages into a sales vehicle
2. Create a reason to produce a desirable action
3. Create a way to measure your results

Do this each and every time you advertise. Do it consistently.
It will pay off in ways you can't even imagine.