How a Pencil & Paper Can Help You Measure Marketing ROI

Back in my salad days, I managed the office of a small manufacturing business for seven years, and during that time I discovered the secret to tracking which marketing methods worked.

Are you sitting down? It’s pretty revolutionary.

I simply asked, “How did you hear about us?”

Because I answered the telephone (in those days we didn’t have voice mail or email), I got to speak one-on-one with everyone who called inquiring about the company’s technical sewing services.

I kept a piece of paper by the telephone and each time someone new called, I always made sure to ask how he/she found us. Because these were pre-Internet days, the answers were usually, “The Thomas Register,” “the Yellow Pages,” or “You were referred to us.”

I’d then put a tick mark next to the appropriate answer on the piece of paper.

At the end of each quarter, I added up the tick marks — and that’s how we knew to keep advertising in the Yellow Pages (including which cities and categories) and the Thomas Register.

Low-tech I know, but it worked.

It still works today, too. I know, because with all the high-tech tools available for tracking marketing ROI, I still use this same exact method. (I also recommend it to the small business owners who work with me.)

When someone new calls or emails me, I immediately pull out my Prospect Questionnaire, a form I use to help me remember to ask important questions, including “How did you hear about me?”

Every six months or so, I go back through these forms, check off how people found me using a piece of paper and a pencil, and then analyze the results. The process takes about an hour, and I get a really good overview of what’s working and what’s not.

(Internet search and referrals are huge for me. Everything else — meh.)

Granted, this method won’t work for all companies. But for those small B2B companies with one to 10 people, it’s a great back-of-the-napkin method for quickly determining your marketing ROI.

Best of all, it’s free, easy, and fast.

To help you get started, feel free to download my Prospect Questionnaire as well as the quick and dirty “call tracking form” I’ve given to clients to use. Like I said, neither is sexy, but they work.

If you’re a small company or one-person business, do you have other low-cost, low-tech methods for tracking marketing ROI? Please share them!