…and has been for the last 16 months or so — but that’s not what I’m talking about.  Now, more than ever, it’s time to crunch the analytics of your next marketing campaign.  If you do it properly, you’ll satisfy the abacus-wielding bean counters in your office, you’ll know where you went wrong and where you scored, and your next campaign will be better off for it.

Of course, it’s a little dicey trying to track your successes in traditional advertising — television, radio, print and outdoor.  Other than using different phone numbers for each media vehicle, or sending people to different microsites (use Wordpress and save some money), the only sure-fired way to measure traditional success is to select one medium and promote it full tilt.  Unfortunately, that’s not the right way to purchase media – because the mix is essential to the media plan’s integrity.

So, look beyond the traditional and go digital.  Start with your websites and microsites and append Google Analytics (it’s free) to — at the very least — your promotional pages.  Track your natural traffic, direct loads (people who type in your exact web address), referring site traffic, the top content pages, top landing pages, and where people are bailing from your site.  Go beyond the unique visitor counts and time spent viewing to see how your promotion is really doing.

Then, from your Facebook Business Page, where your promotion should be front and center, you can use Facebook Insights to track everything from interactions and wall posts, to likes, ratings and post quality.

If you’re placing your TV spot or long-format product video on YouTube, you can track total views, comments, ratings, rating averages and some demographics.

If you are tweeting links to promotional pages, Twitter’s interface retains some critical information on its dashboard.  You’ll be able to track followers, mentions and re-tweets.  Additionally, there are plenty of other applications to track your online promotional efforts.  Radiant 6 and Biz360 can get pricey, but other resources like ViralHeat and Cision can do the trick.  Now that the new normal in advertising is if you can’t measure it, don’t do it – it’s clearly time to crunch the analytics.