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As marketers, we are inundated with a virtually unlimited number of opportunities to allocate our budgets, but how do we measure those expenditures in areas such as television, print, outdoor, and events? Are your cinema ads and coffee-cup sleeves really driving sales?

The answer isn’t easy, but one tool that is beginning to make inroads is mobile marketing, not only as an activation mechanism in the aforementioned media placements, but also as a tool to measure non-mobile media. Are you still with me?

Basic Use Case: You sell widgets (not the marketing kind) and want to run a print campaign in five magazines to drive sales and brand awareness. Great, but at the end of the campaign how do you truly measure the effectiveness of all of your hard work? Guess? Look for website traffic spikes that could be attributed to a variety of things (PR, events, etc.) not associated with your print campaign? Run expensive market research studies? The answer is much easier. Add a text call-to-action.

Each magazine (or any creative execution) can be tagged with a unique keyword that is easily measured. From there, the opportunities for tracking are only limited by your imagination. Please follow along.

· Prospect sees the text call-to-action in your print ad in magazine #1 and sends a text for more information.

· We now know what magazine drove the action and the area code of their mobile phone.

· The reply text message could then ask them if they would like additional information sent to them via email. If they respond, we now have the keyword associated with the specific media placement, their area code, and email. You can continue this process offering premiums, contest entries, coupons, or even direct the prospect to your local widget dealer.

Now you have a real measurement tool for your marketing activities. From here, it’s time to go back and compare the various keyword/media placements and decide if tweaking is in order. Maybe magazine #5 just isn’t getting the same response as the other four and it’s time to adjust accordingly. Perhaps you find that a majority of respondents are coming from a specific geography and you should run more local activity.

The tools for measuring media are available, it’s just a matter of integrating the latest tools into your campaigns.