Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a story about small businesses are trying to survive this economic environment by renegotiating every vendor contract they have. Interesting technique, although I personally see this quote as the real downside of this whole scenario:
“Most of us grew up knowing that once ou agree to something, you don’t back out of it”, says small business consultant Bill Bartmann of Bill Bartmann Enterprises in Tulsa, OK. “That rule doesn’t apply anymore.”
Hard to read, yes, but a reality of the new world order. I have a suggestion for all businesses as it relates to their internet marketing efforts. If you are going out to renegotiate these other deals you should two things that will help you grow (yup, grow).
- Take some of that savings and apply it to the most measurable and therefore effective marketing arena which is the internet
- Stop spending completely on marketing that is not working.
As a result of the second suggestion you now have even more money THAT YOU HAD ALREADY BUDGETED to apply to internet marketing techniques that can be measured and controlled. Now you are taking valuable marketing dollars and apply it to the development of SEO campaigns, pay per click (PPC) campaigns and the development of social media opportunities to promote and support your business. Now you can take business from the competition and position yourself better for when things get better, which they will eventually.
That’s it. What else should be said? Don’t waste money on bad marketing options. If you have always done it a certain way then it’s probably time to change. If you spend ridiculous amounts of money with some Yellow Page provider stop and reapply it somewhere that actually works and can be measured.
FT Takeaway: Small business is in survival mode and part of that is to stop wasting money on bad advertising. If you are not in the internet marketing game it’s time. Reassign bad marketing spend to good marketing opportunities.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Frank. your post advocates the reallocation of marketing dollars into measurable internet marketing initiatives. This is great. An idea for a future post would be to take a real life example of a local business and compare the value or ROI of investing $x on Yellow Pages advertising Vs the same $ on a PPC campaign. For a small business which has always spent thousands of dollars each year on Yellow Pages, a typical case study would close the sale on the value of PPC vs YP. What do you think?
I am certainly open to any case studies you are willing to share. I find that many small biz types get embarrassed by how much they are wasting on bad marketing so their ‘openess’ to reveal this number makes it hard to draw comparisons. I do know one thing, when something is not right with your internet marketing you know it. When it’s not right with the YP who knows?
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You are right on the “openess” to share numbers and for an SMB, it is especially hard to measure with precision how much business comes from the YP or the ad in the local newspaper. That was why I was asking if you were aware of any business case in that sense because I do not have any…;-) I am convinced of the value of a PPC campaign but I am unable to do a caoparative analysis for a SMB yet. I will share it with you if I find something noteworthy.
Let’s both keep our eyes open for such an animal. It makes great sense. Thanks, for your time Etienne!
One critical factor is to stay laser focused on the analytics. You can’t just read the news (reports). You have to get into the data, identify consumer behavior and make smart decisions attempting to increase the efficacy of your online marketing. As a small business owner, you may not have the time or expertise to effectively analyze website data. There is good news. Google Analytics is free and Google has authorized and trained a select number of internet marketing companies on how to implement and utilize GA. It is worth talking to one of these companies to better understand how to use data and consumer behavior to grow your business. Check out these companies at http://www.google.com/analytics/authorized_consultants.html