How do you know if it's working?

The time you spend on public relations and marketing should pay for itself in new customers. You won't know if your efforts are paying off, however, unless you keep a record of how your customers are hearing about you. Was it from an article about you? Was it from your Yellow Pages advertising? Did they hear you speak somewhere? Did they hear about you from a friend? Did they get your mailer? Asking these questions, and recording the answers, is called tracking.

With conscientious tracking, you can increase your number of successes and reduce the amount of time and money wasted.

An author I worked with, a best-selling self-help author, began tracking his book and product sales and realized his sales spiked immediately after he made a personal appearance somewhere. This may seem obvious but he had so many marketing programs going on simultaneously that he'd never sat down before and looked at where the actual sales were coming from. By asking for feedback from customers and noting the places and dates where his products were selling, he was able to cut back on some of the wasted advertising and focus those resources into the promotion of his public appearances.

One of my favorite communications tactics and tracking tools is an opt-in email campaign and list management tool called Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com). When you send out a newsletter using Constant Contact, the software allows you to generate reports that show you exactly how many people opened the email, who clicked through to your site and other valuable metrics to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing.