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Interested in losing all the money you’ve put into small business advertising? Just keep spending your advertising dollars and don’t track how your customers are learning about you and your business. Just keep putting money out and out and out and don’t bother to figure out how your advertising dollars are bringing customers (and their money) in.

The majority of small business owners would never admit to wasting company funds, but that’s exactly what they’re doing when they don’t track and measure the results their advertisements gain from customers. Advertising executives use the small business advertising, such as the internet, on fliers, and other advertising space to read the numbers they produce. Advertising executives often push towards the demographics, readerships, and all around “hits” that your advertising has been receiving. It’s simple to believe that with all these numbers being spread around the advertising world, that your advertisement is being seen by many.

But good advertising takes a bit more than just having your message viewed by customers. First your customers do need to view your message multiple times before they’ll act, that’s a given. Second step that matters is the customer’s action. Whether that action is walking through your business’s front doors, or a simple phone call, to buying your products or services. And finally, you have to record which advertisements received the best actions taken by customers.

Ultimately, action based on your small business advertising is the only thing that counts. You need to be counting these actions as closely as you would the cash that your company brings in. You need to be recording and calculating every penny that you’ve put into advertising venues and promotions. This being the best approach to making sure that your advertising funds are being used effectively.

Some business owners ask, “How did you hear about our business?” to their old and new customers, but many do not.. Of those that do, there is often no subjective measurement or analysis made of the data. In fact, the data isn’t even completely collected.

Don’t spend any more money towards your small business advertising, at least until you’ve studied the techniques that profitable businesses use to track their advertising results. Then study ways to take those results, and calculate into them the return off of your investments. Discover how different variations of your small business advertising is being productive towards your business. Figure out which customers that advertising is attracting-in terms of specific demographic groups. Study which advertisements are getting the best results out of your customers, based on your return.

Good advertising executives that know their way around the market and their businesses will teach business owners how to compare the data from your best advertisements. There are many simple but effective ways to do this. Polling your customers doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, and can be quite simple to do.

Piece of cake. If you don’t want the fate of many small business advertising that waste their funds on under-effective advertising, then learn how to measure the effectiveness of your own small business advertising. Then jump on the next advertising executive that comes near you and ask: “How can I measure the results of your advertising to see if it’s as good as you say?”