How do you measure if your internet marketing plan is successful?

[Tom Antion]

You cannot always measure exactly the effectiveness of a campaign especially when you are just starting up. The reason is you have yet to determine the lifetime value of a customer for your business. Let's say someone responds to your promotion. they come in and get their free hotdog. We don't know yet if they will comeback once a week for a year or if they never come back again. We don't know if they tell their friends about your hot dogs and their friends start coming. we don't know if they tell their friends not to come. Until you can determine how much an individual customer is worth to you, it will be impossible to tell if the promotion was a success or not.

Should you do it anyway. I think absolutely. Even if you give them a free hotdog, they will probably buy a drink at least and maybe more.