Construction Business Owner, August 2007 

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half," department store magnate John Wanamaker famously complained around the beginning of the twentieth century.

If you read that quote and chuckled wryly in complete understanding (and then maybe cried a little), you're not alone. Many business owners are frustrated with the lack of ability to track their advertising and know with absolute certainty what's working and what isn't.

But a brave new world is gradually taking over. It's a world where more and more shoppers use the Internet to research and purchase. And it's a world where you can see-on a graph with almost to-the-customer-detail-how these shoppers found your website and what they did there. Here are just a few ways Internet technology allows you to discover what brings you the most customers.

1. Search engine marketing brings more of the right customers.

Do you use the Internet a lot? If so, you probably spend most of your time looking for things such as products, services or answers to questions. And you've likely used "search engines" such as Google, MSN or Yahoo. Search engines index websites and organize them to help people find what they're looking for. And these search engines can help customers find your website.

Your search engine paid advertising campaigns are based around "keywords." These are search phrases that customers type in when they're looking for products or services you provide, such as "Pensacola builder" or "industrial drill."

When you start your search engine campaign, you'll choose which keywords you want to advertise with based on what similar businesses are doing. But as you watch your statistics, you'll be able to isolate which searches bring you the most customers. And you'll be able to put more resources into those keywords, knowing that you'll get enough customers to pay for it.

The best part is, you pay only when your ad performs, since you're charged only when someone clicks on your search engine ad-unlike radio, TV or newspapers, where you pay regardless of how your ad does.

So with a search engine campaign targeting your best keywords, you can direct customers to your website at the exact moment they're searching for a product or service you offer-and you can see what keyword search led them to your site, so you know what your customers are looking for.

If search engine marketing had been around in the late 1800s, Mr. Wanamaker would have had nothing to complain about, as he would have known exactly where his advertising dollar was being spent.