Friday, September 14, 2007
Local Businesses Eschew Online, Waste Dollars on Print
As we all know, when online marketing is done right, the return on investment is usually much higher than print, radio or broadcast. Local businesses don't recognize that potential, as evidenced by "a recent Piper Jaffray survey showed that local search is now the second most common activity online," according to MediaPost.
Marchex expects the Internet share of local advertising to increase to 25 percent within a decade, but that is a low amount even for today. Based on my experiences in local advertising for my wife's business, I spent about 75 percent of the marketing budget during the past 2 years in print and the rest online, yet 95 percent of her business has come from Internet listings on directory sites. They are cheaper, interactive, and get the right audience, whether you are an accountant, plumber, or clothing retailer.
Think about how people divide their time interacting with media. People spend about 30 minutes or less per day reading the newspaper, maybe twice that listening to the radio, and much more than that with TV or online. Local advertising strategies should reflect that, especially when you consider that people's mindsets are more focused on buying something online than when they turn on the radio.
There is a huge opportunity for someone in each city to take local businesses by the hand and teach them all about online yellow pages, SEO and banner ad buying.
Posted By John Gartner at 09:08 AM
Permanent Link: Local Businesses Eschew Online, Waste Dollars on Print
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