When we visit our clients we are continually consulting with them on what marketing is working and what is not. We are hearing this over and over…
“10 years ago the newspaper worked, but over the last few years our ROI has declined sharply…..”
Newspapers, Radio, and TV use to be the cement that held communities & information together, but not any longer. Your clients and prospects are online up to 4 hours a day in some industries. With this much time being spent online, we can see how Google Adwords have become a real alternative to traditional advertising.
What does this mean?
Offline advertising just does not work as well today. We’re entering an era of radical change for traditional news delivery. Faith in traditional newspaper, broadcast, and radio advertising is waning, while confidence in online advertising is growing. Why is that? 1.3 billion people have left the newspaper for other forms of media - most are other online information sources, because they are spending much more time online. Now people of our communities “hunt and gather” for the news and information that interests them. The “one size fits all” newspaper model does not work anymore.
Here are a few things to remember about online advertising.
- All online advertising is trackable. This means you can see how many people click your ad, come to your page and then convert to a buyer or fill out a request form.
- All inbound calls that are generated from your online advertising are trackable. This means that you can view a report at the turn of the month with call volume related to any marketing campaign.
- Online advertising is inexpensive compared to offline advertising. Look over your 2008 budgets and see what you spent on newspaper, TV, Yellowpages, and radio advertising. Consider reducing your offline budget by at least 25% and moving that online. Most of our clients that have done this have seen an improvement with their overall marketing.
- Your ads are only shown to people who are searching for your services in most cases, unlike yellow page ads where you pay $1000 + a month for a half page and hope that people are still using it.
If you have any more questions please feel free to email me at ian@toledo.com
