Here’s a scenario for you : You are running an ad campaign which requires your target to dial-in for additional information or ordering and you are running it in different media, say, TV Infomercials, classifieds ads in local newspapers and direct mail. How exactly do you track which media is performing well or simply stinking?

Now that’s a sticky situation. Isn’t it? I know it was sticky for me when I did such a campaign for one of my clients. However, you won’t believe how simple the solution was which we came up with to track the results.

Here’s the tactic : At the end of your advertisement when you are passing contact details, add a line like this – Call xxx.xxx.xxx and ask for Enya, she will personally see to it that you get X% discount on the retail price.

You don’t really need to hire a girl names Enya to attend the calls. Just assign each of your tele-operators bunch of names to use and use a different name for each of your campaign / media.

1. The name you choose should be based on the target audience. The two factors involved in targeting this are -

a. The Gender to which you are targeting
b. The Place where you are targeting it.

The reason for this is that people are more inclined to remember opposite gender’s name more than that of the same sex.

As regarding the names you should also have the demographics of your target audience ready. For example if your target audience is the ethnic minorities in USA then they will tend to remember the names that are common in their country of origin. For example an Indian immigrant in USA is more like to remember Call Mala rather than Call Gracia.

2. It is very important that you give a reasonable incentive to your customers to ask for the person you mentioned in the ad. If it is not a compelling reason they will ignore it.

Here’s a rule of thumb: no one wants to add that extra burden on his or her own head until there is a compelling reason to do it!