Regardless if you run an orthopedic center, a doggie day care clinic, or a chiropractic office, this is a good time of year to get your 2009 marketing plans on your mind. There's no doubt that what's taking place in our US economy is going to effect business incomes during the next several months. It's an important time of year to remain focused and keep moving forward in attaining your business goals. Too few chiropractors I've spoken to have become masters of tracking where their marketing dollar is working best. Again, it doesn't matter what kind of business you're in, keeping track of what's working (and what's not) may help you save essential advertising dollars in the upcoming year.

Consider adding call tracking to your marketing plan in 2009. Businesses that rely on people picking up the phone and making a call have been around as long as we've had telephones. Think pizza delivery, plumbers, home termite inspectors, locksmiths, automotive detailing services, pet grooming, and many others. These are businesses that people traditionally had researched in yellowpages books, coupon books, and local newspapers, until the popularity of the continually growing Internet.

While consumers continue to use all these mediums (and more) when finding information about local businesses, the use of the Web (particularly via search engines) continues to show steady growth. While a traditional web site would measure traffic to a page using standard website statistical log software, businesses counting on people to pick up the phone to initiate contact can benefit greatly from adding a phone number that measures how many calls a particular line receives.

The graph of the left shows information related to a call tracking program employed by a chiropractor in the San Fernando Valley area of Southern California. The data is for the year 2007 and the calls coming in were measured for a single phone number. That phone number was made visible on a particular website, where consumers seeking chiropractic services could find it. Notice how many calls were made?

Depending on the type of service business someone is in, 348 answered calls can be a great number, or a figure that tells us a particular marketing plan is not working as expected. In the world of chiropractic, nearly 350 leads to a chiropractic office from a single webpage, is a sign that this particular program is working well, and should be continued.

If this service had been provided by a company that used sales agents, sharing reports like these (when the results are good) can provide significant evidence that a particular strategy is working as well is expected.

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