Spending money is something that we all have
to do from time-to-time, but what type of spending in business is a
must or a luxury?
I travel a lot and call on many clients
introducing products and services to them relating to their websites and marketing. Every so often I get
stumped by business people that see advertising as
a luxury rather than as part of their daily business strategy. Our
target market is predominately the small to medium business that are
privately owned or small partnerships. It is these small businesses
that have the most to gain from having a presence on the Internet.
Websites have the ability to equal the playing field for
everyone. Websites are also the window for your clients to
look into your business to see if you are the right company to
render to them the service or product they require.
But websites don’t market themselves. Conventional marketing served
businesses well over the years but is now no longer the strongest
source of delivering visitors to your website. Don’t get me wrong,
there is a place for all types of marketing, but at what cost? As an
exercise in costing, I looked at the five most often used media
platforms and compared it to online marketing from a delivery point
of view.
The Local Marketing /
Advertising Booklet
TThis publication is cheap in
comparison to the big news agents but lacks in quality of design and
have a limited distribution, most likely a few suburbs in a town.
The print quality is 9 out of 10 times on plain paper and copied to
death. The delivery method is not as reliable as other publications.
The life expectancy of this publication is unknown and tends to be
short lived. Feedback mechanism = none.
The Local Weekly Newspaper
Every
town has its own; this is in itself also part of the problem. The
quality is better and the delivery method a bit more reliable but
cost to distribution ratio is no better that the first contender
above. It has a known reputation but the shelf life of an edition is
usually no more than a day or two. Newspaper quality is newspaper
quality. Feedback mechanism = none.
National Newspapers
Sure, they have impressive
distribution numbers and that’s about it. Let’s look at the cost to
distribution ration and then it does not look so good again once you
consider that the shelf live is truly only one day. This means to
get true effectiveness, repeat advertising needs to be done.
Newspaper quality is still only newspaper quality. Feedback
mechanism = none
Industry Magazines
This form of conventional advertising is usually of a
better print quality but lacks the distribution numbers that some of
the others have. These publications have another drawback in that
they do not end up on most newsstands and are not something
mainstream that sells well. The distribution on the subscription
side ends up mainly with your competitor and not your prospective
client. Pricing is expensive once you compare distribution to price,
on the flip side; the delivery method via the Post Office is
reliable. Feedback mechanism = none
Radio & TV Adverts
Distribution numbers are big, but prime
time slots are terribly expensive and last only a few seconds. This
form of conventional advertising are usually reserved for
large corporate companies and the small businessman can’t compete
here. A lot of money is spent on market research to determine the
target market for these adverts even before the production cost are
considered and all of this excludes the cost of the advert space
itself. The delivery mechanism is high and production quality is
usually high as well. Feedback mechanism = none. So where does
online marketing fit into all of this and how does
it compare?
Distribution Numbers
We are not even talking about tens or hundreds of thousands as you
would find in print, but more in the region of tens or hundreds of
MILLIONS for the search engines.
Quality
Online marketing is of the highest standards out
there; copywriting has to be crisp, clear and to the point as space
is limited.
Delivery Mechanism
Hands down the winner. The delivery mechanism is classical of the
supply and demand system which means it is also specific and much
more cost effective. Demand comes from the user typing in a keyword
and if the keyword fits the suppliers supply list, the ad triggers.
Quality
As with the delivery
mechanism, quality is directly related to what the supplier has on
his list of keywords. If the supplier sells “tractor spare parts”
then a user searching for “pink bunny slippers” will not trigger his
ad. The secret is all about relevance and the supplier’s
money is not wasted on irrelevant searches.
Geographical Targeting
With
online marketing one can be specific down to town
level and even have the option to exclude areas that the supplier
does not want to target or serve. This holds true on all levels, be
it provincial, country, continent etc.
Feedback Mechanism
Online
Advertising is most probably the only means of
advertising that can give you quick and reliable feedback as to
how users reacted to your adverts, content and the keywords (thought
pattern/perception) when using your online advert. The
level of detail in the feedback is practical and a great source
information on how your clients use your website.
Cost Effectiveness
It is the hands
down the winner as budgets are relatively small once compared to
conventional advertising.
Then one last question
remains... Why are you not advertising
online yet?