Online Advertising for Offline Businesses
Why Bother To Advertise Online?
The internet affords all business owners incredible power and leverage to attract targeted leads and customers to their brick and mortar business. While many small business owners feel they can’t compete with the “Big Boys” in their industry, the fact remains clear that the internet levels the playing field so that Big Business and “Mom and Pop” businesses can compete equally.
Just because a company has a large internet advertising budget does not mean they are using it properly or optimally. Here at Virtual Expansion Services and Barrow County Business, we know small business in the Winder GA/Barrow County area. Our local businesses have the same ability to rank in the search engines (search tools like Google and Yahoo,etc) as the big companies do… but they are not using this ability to the maximum potential available to them.
Consumers are now searching online for local businesses, services, and products than ever before. While most local business owners still continue to spend a large part of their advertising budget on Yellow Pages ads, statistics show that more and more consumers are searching for businesses and products on the internet – NOT in the Yellow Pages.
Internet Advertising vs Yellow Pages
When a panel of consumers were asked what advertising resources they used FIRST to locate a local business, 50% answered that they start with an online search engine (Google.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com, etc). On the other hand, only 24% of those surveyed used the Yellow Pages first.
Even when a group of small business owners were asked the same question about where they look first for a local business, an internet search engine was their primary source also.
But did you know that almost 50% of small business owners still don’t spend more than 10% of their advertising budget on internet marketing and advertising? Even knowing the the internet is the first place they, as a consumer, look for local business info.
Small business owners need to start thinking like consumers – and have their local business “findable” where consumers are looking… the internet.
