As 2015 gets started and it’s time to look at our business plans and goals to carry us into next year, our marketing and advertising probably plays the largest role.
We are all faced with one simple question. Will the same business plan year after year really deliver different results than what we saw in 2014?
Even if our results were fantastic in 2014, can we do better in 2015, and if so, can we expect better results with the same plan? Conventional wisdom tell us that doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results will always lead to disappointment, and in business marketing this isn’t any different.
Are you so happy with your current results that growth does not matter; you just want to maintain the current flow? Not if growth is part of your business plan, which we assume that’s the purpose of business.
If you think some changes in this year’s advertising plan might be beneficial to your business, and you want to know how Vallarta Daily might fit into that plan, we would encourage you to read more about how internet advertising works and the best way to choose what’s best for your businesses. Whether or not Vallarta Daily is a match for your plans, hopefully we can help you understand a little more about what to look for in advertising and finding out what works best for you.
Living and doing business in Puerto Vallarta requires a large portion of local business advertising budgets to focus on internet marketing, Google ads, and banner ads from other local websites that have a large audience of your potential customers. This is true of most tourist destinations where the majority of travelers now learn about a location and its offerings on the web. Businesses in our area are finding that they can reach more people at a much more reasonable cost using internet advertising verses the print media genre.
However buying advertising space on the internet requires more than knowing who gets the most web visitors, for businesses the concern should be who gets the most web visitors that are potential clients for that particular business.
If you sell clown shoes and advertise on a website with one million visitors every month, but only one is a clown, you would be better off advertising on a clown trade website with 3000 visitors of which 2,400 are clowns. No clowning around.
There are also differences in what kind of clientele your business targets and whether or not your business depends on getting noticed by new people in the market place or if your businesses also benefits from repeat consumers. For instance, real estate companies must compete for new clients entering the market today because their purchase tends to be a one-time customer, as to where restaurants can appeal to the repeat consumer and existing consumers in the market place as most people go out to eat at least once a week. Other businesses that depend on getting noticed first might be furniture stores, tour companies, and even hair stylists where building loyalty is key to business.
Websites typically begin with a five year growth spurt as they enter the market and target their audience, after that period websites tend to flatten for several years and then begin to decrease and hold less of an impact in terms of advertising ROI. It’s the flow of the internet and there is no changing that reality, websites that are a decade old or more simply don’t bring in the new audience and attention to their advertiser’s brand as they did in previous years. For many advertisers the choice is made to give up loyalty to long standing advertising partners in exchange for a better investment in advertising dollars. At some point it just becomes the best choice for many businesses that find themselves spread thin in advertising with so many options.
A prime example would be the popularity and cycle of the website MySpace.com. The website was the premium social network when it launched in 2003, adding millions of users each month. If a business wasn’t on MySpace it was missing out.
After MySpace’s five years of expected growth for internet websites it finally flattened out until finally in the eighth year it began to see a decline year after year. While MySpace is still an advertising option for some brands, it’s no longer the powerhouse to introduce your brand to growing numbers of users each month. Advertising short-term with MySpace could be beneficial, but there is little need to advertise year after year with what little increase in new users it’s adding. After time advertisers are presenting their ads to the same users day after day, only encouraging ad blindness where web users simply glaze over the company brand because they have seen it all before.
Websites that no longer have a proven upward track in website visitors each month but maintain a good flow of repeat traffic can be valuable for short term advertising opportunities and new businesses entering the market. However it’s important for the advertiser to understand when their advertising has reached its peak and new outlets need to be explored with internet outlets showing steady growth.
Something else that should be considered is the click through rate, meaning how many times your advertisement is clicked compared to the number of times it was displayed. Internet and print ads are both more about branding than sales generation. Both formats are seen at high rates but acted upon in much smaller numbers. While it’s difficult to track print advertising success in terms of ROI, we know that internet ads on the average receive less than a 1% click through rate vs display rate.
An example of this is purchasing a web advertisement that is measured by ad impressions and you purchase 30,000 impressions, you are purchasing about 33 clicks to your website. If larger amounts of website clicks are important to your business success and the only reason for web advertising, there are other options for businesses that generate better click through rates than the standard banner. One of those options would be in-content marketing, having stories written about your business or even press releases.
Web banner ad size could make the difference. Worldwide the most clicked banner on the web is a large rectangle banner 300 PX or more. In second place comes the large 728X90 banner. Banners of a lessor size have proven to garnish less than .04% in clicks vs display, so investing in larger more visible online banner ads could bring more success in terms of bringing new traffic to your company website, but may not play a significant rule in the brand awareness that also benefits companies advertising online.
For more information about advertising on the web, and particularly advertising on this site, you can find additional information here.
As 2015 gets started and it’s time to look at our business plans and goals to carry us into next year, our marketing and . . .
