Best way to track offline sales that actually result from online advertising?
I initially asked this question in a thread by scottspfd82, but to avoid a thread hijack I figured I should ask in its own thread.
A guy I know that has a brick and mortar store that sells large, relatively expensive items (think furniture), had me build his ecom store for him awhile back. He loves the site but now he wants me to drive traffic to it for xx%. He's willing to commit to a large ad spend, but I'm not sure how I can track which sales I should get credit for.
Because of the relatively high cost of the items, I would expect many people to physically go to the store rather than clicking that shiny Buy Now button. That's going to make it a bit challenging for me to manage an ad campaign if I don't know which visitors are converting into sales.
Tracking the sales via phone won't work because he won't give up that side of his sales process. He closes around 80% which is stupid high so that's just not going to be an option.
The best idea I can think of is an exit-pop with a coupon offer, that the visitor can bring in for free sales tax ($150 savings on a $2,500 order). That way if they do buy online then I can easily track them with the standard online tracking we all know and love, and easily collect my commission. If they don't click buy, they get popped with the coupon offer. They print the coupon, turn it in when they buy at the store, and I get a commission based off those redemptions.
Two issues with this. First, a generic coupon won't tell me where that visitor came from. I need a unique identifier of some sort that ties the printed coupon back to the actual visit so I can use that conversion data for campaign management. Thought about IP address, but not all platforms (AdWords for instance) provide that info on your paid traffic. Maybe a timestamp? Any other suggestions?
Second, I have to trust him to actually give me credit for those redeemed coupons, rather than just tossing them in the garbage. I think I've resolved this by explaining why I need the redeemed coupons (other than just to collect my %), and that is to save him money on his ad spend by using that data to better manage his campaigns.
I wasn't really interested in managing someone else's shit until I saw how much traffic his main competitor is getting with their campaigns. Holy fuck. So yeah, suggestions are much appreciated.
I initially asked this question in a thread by scottspfd82, but to avoid a thread hijack I figured I should ask in its own thread.
A guy I know that has a brick and mortar store that sells large, relatively expensive items (think furniture), had me build his ecom store for him awhile back. He loves the site but now he wants me to drive traffic to it for xx%. He's willing to commit to a large ad spend, but I'm not sure how I can track which sales I should get credit for.
Because of the relatively high cost of the items, I would expect many people to physically go to the store rather than clicking that shiny Buy Now button. That's going to make it a bit challenging for me to manage an ad campaign if I don't know which visitors are converting into sales.
Tracking the sales via phone won't work because he won't give up that side of his sales process. He closes around 80% which is stupid high so that's just not going to be an option.
The best idea I can think of is an exit-pop with a coupon offer, that the visitor can bring in for free sales tax ($150 savings on a $2,500 order). That way if they do buy online then I can easily track them with the standard online tracking we all know and love, and easily collect my commission. If they don't click buy, they get popped with the coupon offer. They print the coupon, turn it in when they buy at the store, and I get a commission based off those redemptions.
Two issues with this. First, a generic coupon won't tell me where that visitor came from. I need a unique identifier of some sort that ties the printed coupon back to the actual visit so I can use that conversion data for campaign management. Thought about IP address, but not all platforms (AdWords for instance) provide that info on your paid traffic. Maybe a timestamp? Any other suggestions?
Second, I have to trust him to actually give me credit for those redeemed coupons, rather than just tossing them in the garbage. I think I've resolved this by explaining why I need the redeemed coupons (other than just to collect my %), and that is to save him money on his ad spend by using that data to better manage his campaigns.
I wasn't really interested in managing someone else's shit until I saw how much traffic his main competitor is getting with their campaigns. Holy fuck. So yeah, suggestions are much appreciated.
