Local small businesses have had to wrestle every month with where to advertise their business. Even more of a problem is how does this business owner track the effectiveness of their campaign?
With fewer people reading newspapers, the publishers incomes have drastically declined. To make up for lost sales revenue the publishers have had to raise the cost of advertising in the paper. Unfortunately, the backbone of American business, small businesses, can no longer afford regular newspaper advertising. This dichotomy ultimately hurts the whole local economy.
Because fewer people are buying their local newspapers and businesses have held off buying frequent ads, the next year will see a record level of newspapers close their doors. All the stock brokers are suggesting to their clients to get out of the newspaper industry stocks.
Local TV/Radio advertising has always been out of the financial reach of most small businesses. I have spoke with three advertising department managers for local TV/Radio, and they tell me their falling short of renewing the larger advertisers for 2009. Most of these being local automobile dealerships and companies that relate to the auto industry. In my home state, Florida, the residential and commercial builders/developers are cutting their advertising budgets by as much as 50%. A second phenomena relating to TV, is that every year a larger part of the prime time viewing market is spending their time on-line rather than watching TV. People are finding that they can read and respond to their email and listen to the news simultaneously. Viewers are watching brand new movies on the computer in the evenings and this takes them out of the TV market. The paradigm shift occurring is in favor of the internet. On-line advertising is growing so rapidly that new businesses offering freeby places to meet (social internet clubs) like Myspace, Facebook and etc. are there to take advantage of the advertising they can sell on their site.
Over the past ten years, having a professional on-line presence was a very expensive endeavor. To purchase a domain name, design and maintain a website, host the domain site and pay for advertising to attract people to that site would cost around $25,000 the first year then easily $10,000 every year after. That figure was way out of the picture for small businesses. Professional advertising companies suggest to their clients to save 30% of last years earnings for advertising for the next year.
I polled thirty small businesses in my community and not one of them said they could possibly afford to spend 30% of their profit on advertising. Only one person out of thirty said he thought he had the expertise to set-up and maintain a web site and advertise it adequately to secure his business success. Most people advertising on the internet are using techniques that are years old and do not compete with the pros. These amateurs are simply throwing their money away. The advertising pros know that it takes a huge amount of text all over the internet and that text must be kept fresh or the spiders sent out by search engines will skip over that old unrefreshed site. That takes a lot of time getting that text on the internet then even more time keeping it fresh. There are very few small business people who have the time to do that level of website maintenance and advertising text.
My poll also revealed that most small businesses allow for around $3000- $10,000 a year for advertising of all types. The question now is where will these businesses spend their advertising dollars most effectively?
This information may help many in this indecision. Several national and international studies have documented that 63% of people first do their shopping research on-line prior to purchasing. Most use this for comparison shopping and feel they are well informed when they go into their local shopping stores to buy. As of 2008, we are still buying more products locally rather than over the internet. But, that figure is losing some ground every year. Every year people buy more over the internet and experts claim, that it will continue that way unless small businesses can compete more closely with internet businesses. If these small businesses are to compete on-line then they must have a reasonably good presence on-line. Now they can have that presence for a cost that is within their budgets.
This new company is starting in the USA and have plans to be international in a couple years. Their program planned advertising cost from $49.95-$199.95 per month and you can get a 15% discount if you prepay for the year. This company now has huge text all over the internet already. They simply link your website on their server to the full companies internet presence and Wha La, you are competing with the big boys. Many of this companies advertising clients rate in the top five on each Google search. Let me be clear, they are not a search optimization company. They do not guarantee any certain listing rank, but because they are so huge, they deserve the high search engine ranking they get.
Here is an example. Imagine, Alex is on-line reading about training for a marathon run. While he is on the "Running Wild" website he sees an ad placed by this new advertising company, but the ad is for a local sports store in Alex's home town, called Steve's Sporting Goods. Alex's reading convinces him that a new running shoe endorsed by professional runners is the one to buy. Due to his curiosity, he clicks on Steve's ad and he is directed to an up to date list of running shoes Steve's has in stock. Alex finds the same running shoe the pros use with pictures, prices and directions to and from Steve' Sporting Goods. Alex, thinks for a moment and says, I could have those shoes tonight and the price is very comparable to the on-line price, plus I will not have to wait a week to get them. Alex then buys his shoes locally but, he was directed to a local store while on-line shopping. This helps Alex, the home town business and ultimately the regional economy.
You see, Steve' Sporting Goods is a client of this new advertising company, which is linking local businesses with local shoppers on-line. The IP address of Alex's computer was linked to his internet category (running shoes) and to the local ad linked to Steve's Sporting Goods. If Alex's brother who lives in another city were to go the Running Wild website, he would see an ad from a different Sporting Goods Store in his local area, if they were clients of the new company.
I predict, that this new on-line advertising company will be the answer to many small businesses advertising Dilemma. Since the majority of us first shop on-line prior to purchasing, this Geo-targeted advertising linking to our local businesses should make us all more likely to stay in the black ink.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert
Labels: Advertising Dilemma For Small Businesses