You can dramatically increase your sales simply by taking time to test and track your results. Not only will it help you to determine what's working and what's not, but it will also enable you to focus your efforts on strategies that produce results.

When testing your marketing strategies, keep in mind, a strategy that produces results for one person may not produce results for you. There is no 'set in stone' strategy that works for everyone. You must develop your own style and technique and test your results to determine what works for you. Below are some ad tracking resources to assist you in your testing and tracking endeavors.

Ad Tracking CGI Scripts

LnkinLite http://www.dtp-aus.com/cgiscript/lnkinlte.shtml

If you're looking for a simple way to track clickthroughs, then LnkinLite may be your answer. This free script will enable you to easily keep track of number of clicks a specific link receives. Instead of using your standard link within your advertising, you can use a link created by this script. It will track number of clickthroughs and instantly redirect your visitors to your URL.

Willmaster's ProLinkz http://www.prolinkz.com/

This powerful script is a link creator, tracker, disguiser and manager all in one. It will enable you to create uniquely coded links that redirect to any URL you specify and count all hits and referrers. Cost - $45.00

AdTrackZ http://www.adtrackz.com/

This script will enable you to set up an entire ad tracking campaign including statistical reports for referring URLs, what browsers your visitors have installed, what operating systems your visitors are using and much more. Cost - $47.00

Ad Tracking Services

LinkCounter http://www.linkcounter.com

A free service that tracks clickthrough rates of your links. In addition to tracking your links, LinkCounter hides URL of link destination. This will prevent users from removing or changing your affiliate ID when visiting an affiliate site through your link.

HyperTracker http://www.hypertracker.com

You work your tail off. Formulate business, promotional and advertising plans and do your level best to follow those plans. Unfortunately this is not enough. You must find a way to test effectiveness of these plans and programs as you go along. To do this you must have a means to obtain feedback from consumers plus means to test effectiveness of your advertising.

A sad truth in advertising is that some ads appeal to some people and some to others. The same holds true for advertising media selected to get your message out to world. A killer ad for one segment of market is a dud for another. That’s just way it is. Big Corporations spend millions in never ending quest to find what type of ad and what media is best for them.

Most of us do not possess millions to waste money trying to find ’don’t miss’ ads and proper media. We must proceed within financial capabilities we have. We cannot afford to waste money on advertising which is not effective for our purpose. Small business people offline or online are faced with some tough problems in their advertising programs. There is never enough money available to do everything that needs to be done. This being case we must be careful in what we do and when we do it.

We can help ourselves by learning basics of writing good ads and doing some simple research to discover what specific media appears to be most effective, at moment, for businesses like our own. The data is there it just takes a little time and research to discover it. OK, fine we have done our research and are satisfied that we can produce effective ads and know media we wish to use. What now? Remember we don’t have a whole lot of money available so we want to get biggest bang for buck that we can.