Small Businesses Stick to Marketing Basics
July 9, 2009 by Jean Murray
Filed under Business
Small business owners are sticking to the “tried and true” marketing strategies in this tough economic year. An October 2008 Small Business Marketing Outlook report by Adology shows that small businesses continue to be optimistic about marketing, but that they are not venturing out into new marketing efforts.
According to the Adology survey, small businesses say they will spend money for online advertising (69%), Yellow Pages (54%), newspapers (51%), and direct mail (51%). This is pretty typical, standard marketing; nothing new and exciting here. Even online marketing has been around for almost 15 years.
Top of the list. Most small businesses (74%) believe their company “must be one of the first 2-3 that come to a customer’s mind” when they need what the small business owner is selling. This idea is borne out by the fight to be at the top of a Google search for that type of business in that area.
But the survey found that small businesses are not venturing out to try newer forms of marketing: 77% do not use online video, 83% do not podcast, and 82% do not use mobile advertising.
Mobile advertising? Mobile advertising is advertising on mobile phones, PDAs and wireless devices. Since the mobile phone/PDA industry has grown exponentially, it has seemed inevitable that mobile advertising would grow at the same rate, and the predictions in late 2007 were optimistic. An article in Wireless Week said:
Mobile advertising seems to be an industry that’s about ready to explode, chasing the billions already being spent on Internet advertising.
And Yahoo says mobile advertising is primed to total $19 billion by 2012. But small businesses seem to have backed off this form of advertising in favor of more traditional forms. It’s my guess that small businesses don’t have the dollars to spend and their markets are more local and specific. It doesn’t make much sense for a small business to advertise on a mobile network when their customers are primarily in Des Moines.
If you have experience with newer forms of advertising and marketing, let me know.
Image: sxc.hu
