Survey Shows Where To Advertise Local Business

If you are a local business owner and are running a special on one of your products, should you advertise in the local paper or on the web?

According to the latest AdWeek Media/Harris Poll it depends on your target market. The specific question the survey asked was “When you are looking for a bargain, which of the following types of advertising, if any, do you believe is most likely to help you find one?”

Of the over 2,000 adults surveyed 23% say the best bargains are in newspapers and magazines, 18% say the Internet is best and 34% say it makes no difference.

But, when you break it down by age groups…

When looking for the best bargains, different age groups have different ideas of where to look. Those 18-34 are more likely to say online ads (22%) and television commercials (17%) are the best places to go while those 35-44 years old go online (26%). The older one is, the more likely they are to use newspaper and magazine advertisements, as 24% of those 44-54 and one-third of those 55 and older (33%) say those are media most likely to help them find the best bargain.

In other words, if your product is slanted at a younger age group, you’ll get a better response with online ads. If you are targeting an older group your newspaper ad may get a better response.

Females had a slightly higher bias toward newspapers/magazines/catalogs, men had a higher preference for online ads.

29% of college graduates chose online ads for bargains while only 12% of high-school grads did.

So it pays to know your target market. While the difference isn’t all that much, you should gear your print ads toward products for older women and online ads for younger, college-educated males..
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Going Green – In More Ways Than One

I just came across a study on so-called “green marketing”. The complete study costs $479 but there is an executive summary that has some interesting findings.

33% of respondents said green marketing was more effective than normal, 7% said it was less effective, and 60% said it made no difference or they didn’t know.

DIDN’T KNOW? What percentage didn’t know whether the money they spent on advertising was effective? If you can’t track the results, don’t spend the money – a rant I’ll save for another post.

Smaller companies with advertising budgets less than $250,000 spent over 26% on green marketing, larger companies (> $50 million ad budget) spent just 6% on green marketing. Read more.
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Is Google Being Evil? – Part 2

In Is Google Being Evil? – Part 1 I stressed the importance of business owners protecting their brand. But first, you have to know where information is being written about your business.

Well, Google has come up with a way to post comments about your web site, on your web site, without your knowledge or consent.

It’s called Sidewiki. It’s part of the Google Toolbar and it opens up a separate window above your web pages for people to post and read comments from other visitors. You won’t even know about it unless you install Google’s Toolbar and use it on ALL of your web pages, loading page after page, to see what’s being written. To do this you must enable the ‘enhanced’ version of the toolbar, which means Google then tracks your web surfing. Read more.
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Is Google Being Evil? – Part 1

“Don’t be evil.”  Unofficial Google motto/slogan

If you own or run a business one of your major concerns is your “brand” or reputation. If someone is slamming your business online you need to know about it and respond.

But what if you can’t respond? What if there’s no way of telling who’s saying negative things about your business? What if it’s a disgruntled customer? What if it’s your competition?

This is the problem with Google now that they are including Twitter in their real time search results. Read more.
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From Small Business To Big Business – One Man’s Story

A lot of clients ask us “how do I get started with an online business?” Thomas Heath, a columnist for the Washington post, just wrote a column about one man’s rise from small sales on eBay to a 5 million dollar a year company.

Find your niche. The man in question is a U.S. Marine named Jeffrey Morin. He started in the niche of “challenge coins”, memorabilia coins that commemorate service in a military unit or exercise. He saw them on eBay selling for around $10 – $15 and knew he could buy them for around $5. A small business was born.

Grow your sales. After about six months he got an email asking if he could he find a coin dedicated to mothers with sons in the Marine Corps. No, but he could sure make one! Read more.
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Video Intro To Google Trends

When doing market research or keyword research one of the tools I use is Google Trends. It shows data on search terms that includes the number of searches over time, whether in days, months or years.

Using this data can help you decide when to run online ad campaigns and is also useful for small businesses using direct marketing by choosing the appropriate time to run local ad campaigns.

Google Trends also shows data over time on web sites, whether your own or your competition.

The 6 minute video below provides an overview of Google Trends…

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Local Search Means Business

Even if you have a local business you need a local search marketing strategy. By local search I mean online search and now, more and more, searches using mobile phones.

A couple of months ago I wrote about local search taking over from Yellow Pages.

According to the latest study from TMP Directional Marketing it continues to grow. Local search has grown from 11% to 12% and Internet Yellow Pages usage has grown from 19% to 21% in the last year. Some excerpts from the study are below:

…the growing demand for local business information across interactive search platforms, especially online and mobile, is creating additional opportunities…  In order to reach target audiences, marketers must think locally and focus their messages on local marketplaces where consumers shop.

…in-store purchases decreased across the board since 2007, most likely due to economic factors, half of all local business searchers made purchases [emphasis added].

With 22 million consumers using the mobile Internet through June 2009, the preferred mode to access local business information remains the mobile browser. In fact, 127 percent more users accessed local content via downloaded applications on mobile devices, compared to June 2008.

This means having a web site with hours of operation, address, phone number and a map as a minimum. This means claiming your business in local search engines and signing up in online search directories.

To be successful in today’s interactive community, your local business must be in local search engines and online local business directories..
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New FTC Guidelines On Endorsements and Testimonials

The Federal Trade Commission has just released guidelines (pdf) concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, including Internet ads.

Here are a few excerpts:

“Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser.”

“Advertisers are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements, or for failing to disclose material connections between themselves and their endorsers”

“If the advertiser does not have substantiation that the endorser’s experience is representative of what consumers will generally achieve, the advertisement should clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected performance in the depicted circumstances, and the advertiser must possess and rely on adequate substantiation for that representation.”

In the last quote the FTC is trying to quash the “Results not typical” or “Results may vary” caveat that some advertisers use. The FTC says you should include what typical results really are. It goes on in an example about a weight-loss product:

…if consumers cannot generally expect to achieve such results, the ad should clearly and conspicuously disclose what they can expect to lose in the depicted circumstances

The guidelines contain a ton of examples and hypothetical situations and covers customer, expert and organizational endorsements. Read more.
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