It (Still) Pays to Advertise
July 2010
“It pays to advertise” was a popular slogan from the 1950s that is still proving itself as true today. I was reminded of this recently in the little town where I live.
There’s an old-fashioned food stand across the road from a small beach not far from my home. The beach has metered parking spaces for about 50 or 60 cars and the food stand primarily served beach visitors with sandwiches, fried food, and ice cream. This was a modest business, successful for a number of years, but definitely limited by its niche location and clientele.
This past spring, the owner of the food stand began an advertising campaign, securing space on a half-dozen billboards, display ads in the local newspaper, and a ‘scroll’ ad running across the bottom of the screen on the local weather channel broadcasts.
That little local beach food stand is now suddenly a regional powerhouse. Nearly every day now, even in bad weather and late in the evening, there are dozens of cars in front of the food stand and parked along the edge of the road while their drivers and passengers feast on lobster rolls and lick dripping ice cream cones. Their customer base includes residents from our town and the surrounding area as well as tourists and people just passing through the area who see the billboards or get a sudden craving for a lobster roll while checking out the local weather forecast.
The Field of Dreams was just a movie; if you build it, a few may come but most will not even know of your existence unless you reach out and tell them. Although several media experts report that global advertising expenditures across TV, newspapers, magazines and radio have dropped over the last 12-18 months, the Internet continues to show that content marketing (white papers, websites, newsletters, blogs, reports, surveys, webinars, viral videos, case studies, niche books, articles), social networking, and all the other sorts of website marketing show an increase in spending.
Does your marketing plan incorporate all these methods to establish a presence and make sure your message doesn’t get lost? Maybe you don’t have an in-house expert who can quickly and efficiently develop the content needed to communicate your message? Maybe we can help?