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any
excuse is a
good excuse |
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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
BookletThis
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?
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