An Ad Tracking Strategy

It is important that you think out your strategy carefully before you start using the Ad Tracking system seriously. If you get it wrong, then it is going to be hard and painful to unravel it and start over again.

I'd like to thank Nicola from the Get Paid Group for her thoughts on this Strategy

Free Members

You need to set up your Ad Tracker links at http://www.myprotracker.com/login.php.

This tool provides you a weekly click count by day: it may turn out that Tuesdays and Wednesdays pull a better response from one Safelist, whereas your FFA board pulls the most responses on weekends, and the free banner exchange you are using doesn't pull anything.

You can test multiple marketing channels and analyze the return on your investment for each. It is powerful, and I urge you to spend the time getting to know the tool and getting it set up.

When you first access the system, you will start up at the main menu. As you can see, some explanation for each menu item is given online.

Please Note

As a free member, you can only have one "campaign" so you need to be careful about how you set this up to make the most of it. My Pro Tracker allows you to use sub campaigns, so it is possible to track a great number of url's still.

So, I am going to help you set up your single tracker to monitor multiple sub-campaigns, so you can get the maximum tracking exposure for your efforts.

Before you begin, please make a note of the following:-

So, as a first step, we will need to create a campaign.

1.	Click on the 'Add a Campaign' link as indicated above. This will take you to a screen similar to that shown below:-
2.	For Free members, I would give a short campaign ID. The name should be meaningful, because it will help you when you view your ads. I find the description field useful for holding details of the ad itself, as well as minor changes such as tweaks to the ad or headline. If you make a change such as this, you should make a note of how many unique hits have been recorded when you make the change. You could, if you wanted, make a separate sub campaign for each change. I personally only create a new campaign for a completely new ad.
3.	The start and end dates can be altered for when you submit an ad to run for 30 days for example.
4.	My Pro Tracker will demand that you put in a campaign cost, even if it is zero.
5.	You can click on the dropdown list for the different types of campaigns. You MUST enter a value for the box here.
6.	I would not change any of the other options for now. The 'Link 1' field, holds the url that you want to track.
7.	Click on the <Add campaign> button to save your work.

Please Note

If you are a Pro member, you can have limitless campaigns. There are a number of ways that you can do this, but because of the Sub Campaign feature, I use the main campaign as the product I am promoting, and the sub campaigns as each advertising medium and advert for that product.

Once you have set up the main campaign, you will need to set up a sub campaign.

1.	Click on the 'Manage campaigns' link on the left hand side of the main menu.
2.	If you are a free member, then you will only see a single campaign listed, which will be the one you just created. If you are a pro member, as I am, you will see ALL your campaigns list. You should see something like this:-
3.	Click on the main campaign (MyCampaign in this case). You should then get to the Campaign screen.

There is a lot to absorb here. I shall go over the main points.

The 'Edit' link next to the campaign ID, is important. You need to click this link when you need to change any part of the campaign, such as the url, or the memo details.

Next to the Sub Campaign Quick Stats is a link called 'Add subcampaign'. This is where your 'real' links will be created.

Below that are all the stats fields. With this program, you can actually track individual sales to specific hits, so you can tell which ads actually bring home the bacon. To do this, however, you need to have your own site, so this is outside the scope of this tutorial. All we are interested in for the moment is unique hits.

The 'Tracking URL' link near the bottom is the actual url that you will promote for this campaign in your adverts. You should make a habit of testing the link before you use it. I recommend that you right click on the link itself, and click on the 'Open in new window' option. This will open the url up in a separate window. It will also record a hit in your counter, so you will be able to check if everything is working.

The 'Code Generator' link is used to created HTML code for sales tracking in your own web pages.

1.	Click on the 'Add subcampaign' link. You will see a screen similar to that shown below. As you can see, this screen is very similar to that for adding a main campaign. Once you have filled this out with the details of your new advert, click on the <Add campaign> button.
2.	Now click on the 'List Campaigns' link. You will see your sub campaign listed under your main campaign. As you can see, your sub campaign will now be listed. If you tested the urls, then you will see some numbers recorded under the hits columns.
3.	If you are a pro running multiple campaigns, then you will find the sorting features useful. Click on the 'group subcampaigns' check box, and click on the button.