Web Site Measurement Hacks

Use Geographic Segmentation to Measure Offline Marketing

With the growing adoption of multi-channel retailing strategies, Geo-segmentation can now provide valuable insight into offline advertising effectiveness.

Offline advertising can take many forms, including television commercials, radio ads, billboards, print, direct mail, and even guerilla marketing. Compared to the relative ease of measuring Internet advertising, measuring offline advertising is considerably more difficult. Companies have relied on coupon codes, purchase and brand awareness surveys, dedicated 800 numbers, and other costly tactics. Fortunately, because offline advertising is now directing many audiences online, you can leverage web measurement and geo-segmentation to evaluate the effectiveness these efforts [Hack #78] . Most top measurement vendors provide geo-segmentation tools either as standard or as an add-on package; consult your particular vendor for specifics regarding how to get geo-segmentation added for your analysis.

To begin, you must decide which regions you are advertising in. Then decide which regions will serve as control; that is, regions that you are explicitly not advertising in. The control regions are important, because they will be used to remove bias that may occur in your target regions from other, unrelated marketing activities. Once you pick your targets and controls, establish precampaign baselines for traffic, revenue, leads—whatever key performance indicators best highlight campaign ...