Throwing Money Down A Dark Hole?

by | May 24, 2012 | Advertising Tips

Not caring about the effectiveness of your advertising usually means you are wasting money. The efficiency can be measured best on the Internet, but mass media advertising can also be tracked through your Internet site.

The aim of advertising is either increase in sales or building brand. In our 30 years of advertising experience, we have never had a tool that can track results for advertising like Google Analytics. If your business does not have a web page advertising strategy you are missing the most important detail in marketing your business. At the end of this article, you will see a graph that tracked radio and digital screen advertising using Google event tracking.

Stop advertising everywhere until you can track it!

Here are the four main components of an online presence that every small business should evaluate.

  1. Interactive Website
    In the old days, websites required understanding programming languages to build and update. This could often be very costly for businesses, because businesses evolve and change. We add new services, we add new products, and sometimes our key employees change and all these things require website updates.The good news is technology has changed. There are now open source templates that can be built to grow with your business. Today even your receptionist can easily update websites. For your site to serve as an online marketing tool it must be fresh, up-to-date and growing with your industry.
  2. Content Marketing
    Content has become more important. Content is about sharing information about your industry and your business with your target market. Content plays a vital role in getting ranked in search engines and it also helps to build credibility and trust with those that are interested in what you have to offer. It takes a commitment and it takes consistency, but it can help you in creating an online presence that changes your business.
  3. Search Marketing
    Search marketing is the difference of whether people find you or not when searching for your targeted keywords. Do you have your top 10 key words in your site? Google your targeted keywords and see for yourself. This is something you shouldn’t take lightly, because it means your target market is finding your competitors, not you.
  4. Social Media Marketing
    At this point you may not understand social media marketing, but again it’s something that cannot be ignored. Social media marketing that might work for you are:
    • Twitter – A network of strangers.
    • LinkedIn – A network for professionals.
    • Facebook – A network of family and friends.
    • Google+ – A growing network that will combine all of the above and impact your search results.

There are other components that can aid in creating an interactive and effective online presence for your business, but before you go one step further with your marketing you must have the four components listed above in place and running smoothly. Once you’ve done that you can move into the next level and create a marketing powerhouse online for your business.

Moving ahead with mass media marketing before you fix your web is premature. Until you have a gauge for what is working in your advertising moving ahead will only make more work and cost you more money rather than drive more business.