Online media planning in a small market

The tools available to the online marketer are plentiful, and with a broad topic or a fairly general target market, the possibilities are literally endless. There’s online video, social media, good old display advertising, mobile marketing with ads or text messages, email marketing, website optimization, rss advertising, search engine marketing, podcasts, blogging…well, my goal here isn’t to list them all. The point is that when marketing to a broad group an online marketing consultant or firm has endless options and can spend an eternity optimizing and improving over time. But what does a business do when trying to reach a smaller community? A number of smaller communities, let’s say communities with a population of less than 250,000 people, are in an awkward spot. Newspapers and local television are struggling or closing their doors, and for many businesses those mediums are where the bulk of the marketing budget is spent.

So with newspaper circulation dwindling and the future of local television undetermined in many smaller communities, now is an important time for businesses to start considering online marketing. In the past one could argue that a business can remain competitive using traditional marketing tactics – chances are that if you’ve spent a number of years marketing with newspapers, you’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. But as marketing budgets adapt to take advantage of new online marketing opportunities, these already struggling traditional mediums are going to be pulling in smaller percentages of their advertiser’s budgets.

A common excuse used to avoid using online marketing is that the company website isn’t up to par, and the good news is web development costs aren’t as high as they used to be. The bottom line is online marketing is becoming less of an optional marketing tactic and more of an obligatory tactic – but after a business gets that first taste of the new opportunity, measurably and flexibility online marketing offers, I just know the investment will be worth it.

The best part is you don’t have to jump into the deep end. I can work with your business to create an online marketing strategy that fits your budget and makes sense for your brand. Just drop me a note with any questions or thoughts and we’ll go from there!

Compete.com reports on Bing

Compete.com recently released it’s June data, and in the email announcement they designate an entire article to Bing. Reading my previous post, without basing my thoughts on any real numbers, I did have a feeling Bing was off to a great start in comparison with Live Search. Microsoft has managed to stir the pot, and Compete.com helps us gauge just how shaken the search industry is.

For starters, Bing managed to drive a 58% increase in traffic to Microsoft Search sites soon after it was announced. That’s quite a feat in itself, but as Compete points out, that’s not the most interesting part. The interesting news is that when looking at Google, Yahoo and AOL, it was Google’s search audience that was most likely to go check Bing out. This might indicate that Google searchers are more likely to consider other search options. Could this be a chink in Google’s armor? Looking at this Compete Graph, it very well may be…

The basics of Twitter in 2 minutes

Twitter’s growth has been quite exceptional, and maybe you’re wondering what all the hype is about? To put some perspective on the attention Twitter is receiving, take a look at this comparison chart with Twitter.com and Foxsports.com, courtesy of Compete.

The video below is very simplistic, but it conveys the basics of Twitter quite well.

Compete.com’s Velocity Analytics

Compete has an interesting measurement called Velocity, which is defined as “…a metric derived from time spent on a site…” Performing a comparison like the one below, you can get an idea about the “quality of traffic” different websites experience.

We all know YouTube is the dominant video site, but according to Velocity, BlinkX visitors spend more time on site than YouTube visitors. According to Compete’s People Count metric, BlinkX receives about the same amount of traffic as chicagotribune.com. Since BlinkX pulls video from various video sites, this is just one more reason to make sure your brand is represented on sites like YouTube and MetaCafe.