When mapping out your marketing budget, you must break it into two primary categories: internet marketing and traditional marketing. Many small business owners are accustomed to investing most of their marketing budget on local traditional marketing and a small fraction of their budget to online and mobile. Is this the right way to go? Which is more effective? Here are some things to consider regarding internet marketing for small business owners.
What Is Internet Marketing?
Let’s first begin by defining the difference between the two. Traditional marketing includes: newspaper advertising, flyers, telemarketing, magazine ads, direct mailers, print newsletters, event or team sponsorship, and more. New methods of internet marketing are always popping up, but some of the most common include:
- Business websites and blogs
- Search engine optimization
- Email subscriber lists
- Electronic newsletters
- Social media sites
- Business networking sites
- Online testimonials and review sites
- Video-sharing sites
- Press release distributors
- Paid internet advertising
- Apps and online tools
Which Is More Effective?
There is certainly a time and a place for traditional marketing, which will vary from one business to the next. However, there is much grey area with traditional marketing. According to Seriously Simple Marketing the cost difference required to reach 2,000 people online vs. offline is astounding:
- $50 for search engine marketing
- $75 for social media marketing
- $150 for broadcast radio
- $250 for newspaper
- $500 for magazines
- $900 for direct mailers
So, for the same direct mailer budget, you can reach over 30,000 more people!
Can You Target Your Local Audience Online?
If you continue to invest most of your budget in traditional marketing due to your ability to target your local audience, then you will be pleasantly surprised to learn that you can hyper-target your local audience and demographic online. For example, you may send a direct mailer to a specific zip code with a handful of personal identifiers such as age group or gender—but online you can target by far more in-depth data points, including: age, gender, interests, website search history, recent website visitors, career, and more. And you will be provided with in-depth analytics regarding who has engaged with your online ad. What this means is that you can reduce your marketing budget and your CPA at the same time.
Want To Expand Outside Of Your Local Service Area?
With the ability to hyper-target leads online you can easily and inexpensively expand beyond your local service area. For example, if you have considered selling your products or services statewide, nationwide, or globally. Even if you want to expand your plumbing service radius online marketing makes it easier to quickly expand your reach. If your business is online-only internet marketing may be your only marketing avenue
Last but certainly not least, online marketing allows you to capture your leads and re-engage. For example, adding a lead to your email marketing list or if they follow you on social media, it is easier to stay top of mind.
If you are searching for an internet marketing expert to help launch your new marketing strategy—reach out to the team at Solocube Creative today!
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