I'm sitting in my chair and my 3 year old son, Hazen, says, "okay, mummy, here's the deal..." as he's trying to teach me how to use his computer.  I had to laugh.  "Here's the deal"...where the heck did he learn that?  Doesn't matter because I've decided I LIKE it.

So, here's the deal.

I'm driving down Rymal Road on the Hamilton mountain and see a billboard for a garden centre. And, I'm one of those people who notice advertising of all sorts because, as you probably know, it's my business to notice

.  As I'm looking at this billboard, I can't help but wonder how the heck this company is going to measure whether the billboard led to any concrete business for them or not because no where on the billboard is there a web address, or a code specific to this campaign.  Now, I'm all for billboards...if you can tie the activity to a system of measurement that tells you that the money you spent was effective or not. If you don't do this, how do you know if you should keep putting up billboards, and spending money, or not?

Call me crazy but I don't know too many business owners who can afford to spend money on marketing and not be conscious of whether that spend brought in new business or not, and more specifically, how much new business.

Another pet phrase of my son is, "sounds like a plan".

How about if you actually tied your billboard into your online marketing so you could figure out specifically how many people saw your billboard and took action, by either visiting your site or presenting you with a code for a special offer.  Then you'd know, very specifically, whether this was a good investment or not.

Sounds like a plan to me.