In a recent survey of 8,500 small and local businesses by MerchantCircle.com shows that traditional offline marketing strategies continue to decline while social marketing is on the rise. Here’s a summary:
Traditional Offline Marketing
- Print advertising dropped from 40% to 27%
- Direct mail dropped from 39% to 28%
- Yellow Pages dropped from 45% to 37%
although almost a quarter of small businesses still named one of the three as their most effective method of marketing.
Social Media
- Facebook – 70%
- Google [Google is social media?] – 66%
- Twitter – 40%
Not Ready For Prime Time
- Mobile marketing – 15%
- Online group specials (like Groupon) – 11%
Most of the businesses surveyed were pretty evenly split on the effectiveness of social, search and email marketing. Also, about half were using Google Places and a third Facebook Places as well as other traditional online directories like Yellowbook and SuperPages.com
While mobile marketing may still be on the horizon we’re recommending to our clients that they at least set up a mobile-friendly version of their web sites.
The technology is moving and small and local businesses have to move with it..
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According to the latest survey by The Creative Group the most overused and annoying term in marketing is “social media”.
Their list of 25 words and phrases includes other gems like
- Viral
- Proactive
- 24/7
- Social Media Expert
- Interactive
- Value Added
and the always popular “free”, which every marketing guru (another word I find annoying) will tell you grabs the most attention.
So how do you work around annoying and passé terms?
The Creative Group offers four tips for eliminating jargon in your communications:
- Translate your thoughts. It’s typical to think in the lingo you use every day. But when putting your ideas to paper or in an e-mail, take the time to explain the concepts in terms that your audience will easily understand.
- Edit, edit, edit. Many buzzwords are unnecessary. Think carefully: Does a phrase like “at the end of the day” really add to what you’re trying to say? Probably not.
- Break bad habits. We all rely on certain phrases when we speak. If the ones you gravitate toward are on the list of annoying buzzwords, think of alternatives that convey the same meaning.
- Show instead of tell. Rather than relying on buzzwords, use concrete examples to convey your thoughts. For instance, instead of discussing your fully “integrated” marketing strategy for a product rollout, describe the various elements and how they work together.
My solution is to test, test, test. If your ROI (oops, another term on their list) is decreasing. test a different ad with a similar phrase. I’ve found that Roget’s Thesaurus is a marketer’s best friend…
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Many small businesses don’t advertise at all – they rely on word of mouth advertising. But more and more people are turning to the Internet to verify recommendations from even friends and family.
As I mentioned in an earlier post (Where Do Moms Go For Advice Online?) many women get product recommendations from mom bloggers online.
According to new research from Cone consumers are even turning to the web to investigate product recommendations from family and friends.
Before deciding whether to purchase recommended products or services, more than four-out-of-five consumers (81%) will go online to verify those recommendations, specifically through
researching product/service information (61%), reading user reviews (55%) or searching ratings websites (43%).
Of those who go online to check out a product’s reputation, 77% say that they are more likely to purchase products or services when they can find additional recommendations about them.
And these aren’t just high-cost products, either. While 82% go online to check out cars, 72% will check out recommendations for a movie or a restaurant on the web and the numbers are even higher for the 25-34 age group.
What they find there, either good or bad, highly influences their decision on whether to purchase.
What this means for small business is that, just like the big guys, you need to get your product or service to social networks, bloggers, review sites, etc. prior to a major advertising campaign so potential buyers have someone else’s word for it rather than your own..
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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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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. Continue reading .
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Mobile phone usage is growing fast, especially smart phones, and some big names are moving into the field.
First, Google is buying AdMob for 750 million dollars.
AdMob is one of the top sellers of banner ads on iPhone applications and Web pages that can be retrieved from mobile phones. The acquisition could help establish Google as an early leader in the small but rapidly expanding mobile phone advertising business. [NY Times]
Advertising sales on mobile phones was a paltry 160 million dollars last year compared for $22 billion for online ads, and the “experts” projections for future ad spending differ radically, but everyone’s in agreement that it has no place to go but up and Google is positioning themselves to be in the lead. Continue reading .
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