Advertising is a very effective way to generate leads, but it remains one of those double edge swords type of things for budget crunched small businesses. On the surface, advertising can represent the single greatest marketing expense – on the other hand, it is how most businesses take it to the next level.

So how do you guarantee you are getting the most bang for the big bucks. In one word, tracking. Now that may sound a little simplistic, but experience tells me few businesses take the time to do this, let alone do it right.

When you systematically measure every possible nuance of your advertising, both creative and placement, two things happen. You begin to develop advertising that is guaranteed to work and you cut out every ounce of advertising fat.

Almost every small business I’ve ever worked with has confessed to buying more than one ad based on the fact that a salesperson walked through the door and convinced them it was a great idea. (This number was significantly higher when the salesperson was young, attractive and of the opposite sex.)

Now, is that any way to spend a significant portion of your precious marketing budget?

When you measure your advertising for very specific results you can begin to test and place ads in new and unique places. You can begin to refine every aspect of your sales process. You can understand exactly why people buy and when. See, tracking becomes endemic when done right. You can measure far more than the response to an ad once you get the hang of it.

You can measure referrals, media mentions, job applications, smiles, handshakes, requests for information – the sky’s the limit. And, it will make you a much more systematic marketer, shielded from the whims of the next person that walks through the door and offers unsolicited marketing advice.

Ok, so now you’re convinced you need to do this you simply need the tools, right?

I’ve discovered a fabulous tool called AdSymetrix. This tracking service allows you to monitor the results of every online and offline campaign you can conceive. You can use it for direct mail, AdWords, magazine ads, email campaigns, and even track conversion from online press releases. To me, this is the missing piece in the marketing puzzle. The founders of AdSymetrix are also busy uncovering and testing new low cost places for you to advertising. Media agencies and publishers are turning to AdSymetrix to provide third party validation on the effectiveness (or not) of their respective publications.

In the spirit of full discloser the founders, Rick Rochan and Andy Schwartz, are also Duct Tape Marketing coaches, but that simply means that they have a much more fully developed appreciation for the marketing aspects of using a tracking tool. Expect to see the AdSymetrix toolset fully baked into the Duct Tape Marketing system.

In fact, the first 10 Duct Tape Marketing readers who want to give AdSymetrix a test, can send me an email to john@ducttapemarketing.com and I’ll make sure you get a free trial.