I’ve worked off and on in the publishing business for roughly twenty years. I began working for a magazine publisher in Atlanta in my early twenties performing print layout duties for a magazine publisher, and designing advertisements for the same publication. This was back before computers were widely used for print layout. We did it the old fashioned way with paste-ups, rubylin, screening and actually shooting each page with a camera, versus using a Linotronics laser typesetter that came along a few years later. In any case ‘publishing’ and I go way back.

It used to be that print publications was the best and most affordable way to get in front of customers, and it some cases can still be. However the days of a high return on investment from running yellow pages ads, newspapers and even magazine ads is gone. Print publication circulations are continuing to dwindle. As fast as the circulation dwindles the advertising prices of these publications increase. Nowadays you don’t get anything close in terms of a return on investment for what you end up paying for print ads.

So just how to you reach customers in today’s Internet enabled society? I am glad you asked.

Your potential customers are sitting in front of their computers at work and in their free time. They are also watching more television than ever thanks to constantly 24 hour news, 24 hour sports, and reality television shows.

Since your customers are online surfing around and watching television that’s where you would want to begin advertising and marketing. With the popularity of Internet having a website for your business or even using pay per click advertising can be very affordable. In fact, a lot cheaper than print advertising would be. With most communities being served by cable television companies you can also reach your customers while they are watching their favorite shows and it too is affordable.

I will discuss both types of advertising opportunities and hopefully you can walk away having learned the best ways to get in front of your customers and at the same time get an excellent on your advertising investment.

Internet – Search Engine – PPC Advertising - Website

Let’s face it most people use search engines to find information, from addresses and phones numbers, maps, research companies, find products, and catch up on the news and to learn. As an example let’s do a couple of search on several search engines to see what comes up.

Search Google for: Statesboro Business News

The screenshot above shows the top search results for ‘Statesboro business news”. As bit of a background the company that publishes this magazine (Statesboro Business Magazine – www.statesboro.biz) is GMP Services, Inc. of Statesboro (www.gmpservices.com) they also own Media Publishers (www.mediapublishers.com) as well as publish the Statesboro News and Blog (www.statesboroblog.com). All of the top results for Statesboro Business News points to Media Publishers, GMP Services, Statesboro Blog or this magazine, Statesboro Business Magazine.

Do you know how it cost for all of these websites owned by the same company to get to the top of the search results? It cost us zero dollars ($0.00), that’s absolutely right nothing, it was completely free. Of course it costs something to have the websites online. It costs roughly $10.00 a month to host a website, between $5.00 and $20.00 a year for the domain registration and our time to keep up the websites. The maintenance and upkeep costs are relatively small and are less annually than the cost of running one Sunday print advertisement. 

The point I am trying to make is this. A website is the perfect marketing medium; it is relatively inexpensive and can get you customers from all over the world for a minimal investment. There are some things you can also learn to help your website rank higher as well; it is called search engine optimization. You can pay someone to do SEO or buy a book such as Confidential SEO Secrets and do it yourself for only the cost of the book.

Another method of using the Internet to get in front of customers is search engine pay-per-click advertising. Nearly every search engine worth advertising on (MSN, Google, Yahoo!) charges as little as pennies per click to send potential customers to you website. You’ve probably seen the PPC ads tucked above and beside search engine results. See the example below.

Have you ever driven down the road, watched TV, or held a conversation with someone and said, “I’ve seen or read about that somewhere before”? You just got branded. You’ve recall having seen it before, now you recognize it and chances are you are going to remember it or do something like buy the product. How much did it cost to brand that person on the search engine? Nothing at all, and even if they clicked through your ad it might cost you a couple of pennies at the most. This is a great return on your advertising investment.

Having a website can be as expensive or as inexpensive as you want it to be. When you decide to build a website for your business you need to create a budget and stick to it. Your initial cost to get started is a domain name (example www.statesboro.biz), depending on where you register your domain name it can cost as little as a couple of dollars a year up to $5.00 or more a year. My personal preference is gkg.net (www.gkg.net), most domain registrations are less than ten dollars a year and their customer service cannot be beat.

Website hosting can also be as expensive or as cheap as you need it to be. Be sure to shop around and only add the features you absolutely need, many hosting companies will try up-selling at every term, just be firm and only get what you need.

When it comes to building, or designing your website don’t cut corners, however, don’t spend your whole budget on this. There are many good and affordable web designers out there, be wary of the super high priced designers out there, you can often get the same great results for less money. Unless you are in the design industry I don’t suggest trying to build your own website, after all this is your company’s online image and you need it be the best that you can afford.

Television Advertising

Lastly I want to discuss television advertising. Most people think that it is incredibly expensive and that only large companies can afford to run advertisements on television. WRONG. Most television 30 seconds spots can be purchased anywhere from $5.00 a spot on up. The average for 30 seconds spots during non-primetime is around $8.00 to $10.00 a post. Most of the television advertising reps will work with you and give you some ‘fill-ins’ or extra spots to seal a deal. Most ad reps will also help you make the best channel choices so you can reach your potential customers. I and my wife both advertise on the local cable television channels from time to time. How much we advertise depends largely on the time of year and our advertising budgets. I can tell you this much, if I was going to spend money on advertising it would be on the local TV and the Internet and nothing else.

In the past we have tried just about every kind of advertising you could imagine: Newspaper, Circulars, magazines, phone book, etc. and non of them gave us any kind of return on investment. We spent a lot and didn’t get much response. I am telling you local television and Internet is the only way to advertise, to reach new customers and get an excellent return on our advertising investment. You can take that advice all the way to the ‘bank’.

References:

Pay Per Click Advertising

Google AdWords

Yahoo Search Marketing

Statesboro Local Television Advertising

Northland Cable TV
Call Katie Bulmer at (912) 764-0521 and tell her you saw this article on Statesboro Business Magazin, she'll give you a great deal!