Social Media Marketing. Content Marketing. Inbound Marketing.
In a web-centric marketing landscape that changes so rapidly year by year, is there still room for good-old-fashioned print advertising? After all, your marketing budgets aren’t getting larger – just your marketing options. But there’s a fundamental flaw with the concept that choosing online or offline marketing is an either/or proposition.
The conventional wisdom says that print is dying. Sure. Yup. Got it. We’ve heard it all. But by that same logic, we better write off commercial radio and network television while we’re at it, yes? I can get all the commercial-free music I want from my satellite radio or my iPhone. Factor in my HBO and my Netflix shows, I may never have to see or hear a commercial again! Meanwhile I still schlep to the curb every morning to get my morning newspaper. Crazy, I know.
So just for a minute let’s cut out the Henny Penny sky is falling thing, and look at this from a different perspective.
Yes. Agreed. Print publishing has taken it squarely on the chin over the last 10 years. And yes, the print advertising industry is radically different than the days before Al Gore invented the Internet. But at the same time, let’s look at some of the online options for small businesses.
Online Display Advertising
That would include all those banner ads that you completely ignore. If you’re Buick and introducing your new hybrid crossover luxury sedan, you probably don’t care that nobody clicks on your ads. It’s branding. “Oh hey”, you say to yourself. “Look… Buick has a new hybrid crossover something or other. But there’s no way I’m clicking on that banner because I’m busy reading about Jennifer Lopez’s liposuction to click off the page. For REAL businesses (like yours) …. online banners are often the upsell the newspaper rep threw in to get you into the print edition. Wow. Five thousand impressions in the Harrisburg Bugle for FREE? [Read more…]