What is Traditional Advertising And Why Is It On The Decline?

Traditional advertising methods are no longer as effective as they once were. An increase in internet use and activity over the years is making traditional advertising obsolete. There are several benefits of digital marketing advertising techniques, such as cost savings, increased reach, quicker results, and more...

If you are a business owner with a small to medium sized business, this change likely causes you to feel frustration and annoyance as you struggle to make a return on investment for your advertising dollars. Are you finding yourself spending increasing amounts of money on your traditional ad campaigns which are producing dwindling results?

If so, you’ll find this series a must-read. Over the next five days we’ll be talking about why traditional advertising isn’t working and examine how to make the change to internet marketing, as well as how internet marketing has worked for businesses like yours.

When we are talking about traditional advertising we are talking about:

• Yellow pages
• Newspaper and magazine print ads
• Radio spots and billboards
• T.V. commercials
• Direct mail sales letters

Have you used any of the above methods in the past? Are you using them currently? If so, you should ask yourself how much are you spending on each medium and what kinds of results are you getting for your money? Are these methods generating leads, producing new business or helping you to increase profit?

The point of any type of advertising is to reach a targeted consumer. Since our society is so internet savvy many of these traditional mediums are no longer as effective as they once were in reaching the consumer.

Yellow Pages – From Your Doorstep to Your Recycling Bin

Are you paying expensive fees to have your ad displayed in the yellow pages? If so, you may want to reconsider how you are spending your money.

For example, in New York city a one inch display ad used to cost around $2500, and a full page display ad up to $92 000!

This is a lot of money to spend considering that fewer and fewer consumers are turning to the yellow pages for information.  Although everyone receives a yellow pages book for free, few people actually use it and sadly they tend to collect dust on a shelf or go straight to the recycling bin.

Why would anyone use the yellow pages when it is faster and easier to search online for the same information?  Not only is it easier to use the internet to find what you are looking for, you’ll notice that information on the internet is bigger and easier to read than the small print on thin paper. So, when looking at traditional marketing vs e marketing, your business will surely find a much larger reach online than could ever be possible through traditional mediums such as yellow pages today.

Ultimately, the use of traditional yellow pages is declining as majority of people are turning to the internet to quickly and conveniently find information through on-line search engines. Increasingly, people are using Google maps to find local businesses. Advertising in print directories has fallen over 39% over the past several years, so the future of yellow pages is certainly in question.

Are you frustrated with traditional marketing? Let us help you modernize your advertising techniques, and contact our team at WEB ROI today. We would be happy to help with any of your digital marketing needs.

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Declining Newspaper Readership

Do you invest now in newspaper advertising?  If so, you know that depending on the size of ad and level of newspaper (local or national) you can spend anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars for an ad to appear in the paper for one day. Is this an effective use of your advertising budget? You might reconsider if you knew that newspaper readership and circulation have decreased substantially over the past several years and are continuing to drop.

With less and less people reading the newspaper, fewer will see your advertisements. Is it really worth it to pay big money when newspaper readership is currently at an all time low?

Radio Spots are Not Effective for Short-Term Advertising Campaigns

Do you use radio spots as a form of advertising?  If so, then you know that you must purchase 30 – 60 second spots and that the spot must run for at least 6 months in order to see results. In addition, radio listeners are decreasing with more and more people turning to platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. This method is expensive and if it produces results it won't be anytime soon, where as internet advertising can produce results much more quickly and effectively.

Taking a look at social media statistics for example, in Canada, after years of continuous growth, the number of people with at least one social network stands at 25.35 million (that's over 67% of our entire population!). We have one of the world's most connected populations. The difference between social media marketing and traditional marketing includes more and more social media users as the years go on, whereas there are fewer and fewer radio listeners.

T.V. Commercials

There are many issues with running television commercials. T.V. ads are very expensive and often only large businesses can afford this medium. However, despite the costly price, T.V. ads aren’t very effective for a number of reasons, including:

• The demographics are so spread out it becomes difficult to reach a specific targeted audience
• People are often distracted or multi-tasking while watching TV
• Different programs, such as Netflix, has changed the way people watch TV

Why would you spend a lot of your advertising budget when you can’t guarantee your audience will view your ad or that the right type of consumers will be targeted? If you are looking at TV vs digital advertising techniques, digital advertising methods tend to not only save your business time money, but will help you reach a distinct and targeted audience.

Direct Mail – Directly into Recycling

Direct mail campaigns are not only costly, but we have found that not everyone pays attention to them and the ads you have spent so much money on will find themselves in the recycling. Why throw your advertising dollars away?

Internet marketing is a great solution to the frustrations and disappointing results that you receive from traditional marketing, which is costly and ineffective.

Tomorrow we will discuss why internet marketing is a better solution and look at how it has helped businesses who were struggling to make a return on investment through traditional marketing campaigns like Yellow Pages Canada.

Are you looking to modernize your advertising efforts? At WEB ROI, that's what we do! Contact our team today.

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