For the first time, more small businesses are now advertising online than are advertising through traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and cable TV, according to The Kelsey Group, a media research and consulting firm.
Results of Kelsey Group’s latest Local Commerce Monitor study, conducted with research partner ConStat Inc., are stunning. Of the small and medium-size businesses surveyed, 77 percent now say they are using digital or online outlets to market their businesses, while 69 percent are using traditional media.
Overall, the average small business slashed its total spending on advertising and promotion this past year by 24 percent. That’s partly due to the bad economy. But it’s also one byproduct of a steady shift to lower-cost digital and online media and away from traditional media.
The stunning part is this: Despite a precipitous drop in overall ad spending, small-business owners actually increased their online spending by 27 percent over the past year. At the same time, the portion of advertising budgets that small-business owners spend online has skyrocketed from 22 percent to nearly 37 percent.
If you’ve joined the online avalanche and are using, expanding or testing pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising, here are some great ways to improve your results. They come from Kevin Lee, founder and CEO of Didit.com and author of “The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising.”
• Top-load your ad message: When you write your ad copy, start with your conclusion to achieve immediate impact. Follow with strong statements that support it.
• Use Google’s dynamic keyword insertion tool: Many small-business owners are not aware of this powerful way to boost PPC results. Basically, it’s a way to guarantee that the keywords a customer uses to search for your product or service automatically appear in your ad message – even if they are different than those you’ve selected.
Google’s automated method uses a template with a special place for a “default” keyword or phrase that will automatically be replaced by the one used by the person searching. That gives you a better position in the results and ensures that the precise term the customer searched for appears in boldface in your listing.
• Make a compelling offer: Emphasize what you have that the competition doesn’t and condense that unique benefit into 70 to 190 characters of type. But tactics will vary by business, so try a few different things to see what works.
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
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