Small businesses leads the charge towards online marketing
Cinema advertising has the most to lose in shifting adspend patterns while online, mobile and social media are likely to be the winners, a survey by Roy Morgan research suggests.
According to the survey of 13,381 businesses, the vast majority expect that marketing via the Internet will become more important to them over the next 12 months.
The scores are calculated by asking which channels will be more important to their company’s marketing (including advertising, sponsorship and DM) and which will be less, and subtracting the latter score from the former.
Radio and TV were the only other media seeing a positive outlook, while magazines saw a negative score of -18. In large businesses – with a spend of $50m or more – sentiment was warmer to TV and radio, while newspapers were also on the up.
Yes its cheaper and it works
I’m not sure Pay TV (the national signal) will be too worried about losing their huge suite of local small business advertisers. Unless that group includes the Alliance of National Retailers
why are “Internet” and “Social Media” separate categories?
When you weigh up the audience capacity and cost effectiveness of contemporary digital marketing strategies compared with more traditional ones, it is no wonder that internet, social media and mobile phone methods are on the rise; small businesses with limited people and financial resources would be crazy to spend big bucks on traditional methods such as cinema which cost a fortune when they can go online for a fraction of the cost and reach a larger audience. It’s just called being smart and efficient.
While results can vary dramatically depending on the industry it makes total sense. Anything that focuses your approach to a direct appeal to the most relevant & interested target market HAS to work if the offer/creative is spot on. However, some of the traditional methods like PR, networking & telemarketing are still as powerful as ever, particularly when integrated with digital methods.
For it to be truly instructive it would be fascinating to break down what ‘Internet’ means in their study. Combining display / content marketing / sponsorship / email / search blurs some very distinct platforms and strategic / tactical approaches.
While Internet marketing is certainly a great way to reach a much larger audience for a fraction of the cost of traditional media, it is still critically important to carefully consider exactly which online channels you are going to market through.
I often come across organisations who are spending considerable amounts of money on online marketing without having any way of measuring how well it is working. Without a sound online marketing strategy, it is very easy to pour money into the various online channels without seeing the optimum result.
If your $25000 of PPC is bringing in 1000 more hits a week than you had previously, what does that mean? Is that a good result? What if the rest of your market is getting 5000 more hits? Would you be better off spending that money on Email or Social?
There are ways to better understand the efficacy of your online marketing – both in respect to your own site, but also in respect to the rest of your competitive market. Happy to go into more detail if anyone is interested – kate.barclay@au.experian.com