Surveys like this are difficult to get too excited about because some things just don’t make sense, like 52.6% of companies don’t use Cinema, so 47.4% use Cinema?  I doubt it.

However, the hot trends in marketing are consistent with other reports, like Social, Online Advertising and Video all getting more attention in 2010.

The Database and Direct Marketing emphasis is confusing as it has the third largest increase and the fourth biggest decrease.  That’s probably because direct mail and e-mail according to most other studies are heading in opposite directions, direct mail going down and e-mail going up.

The one clear takeaway is that the new media (top six) are getting more attention at the expense of traditional media.  So, if you’re still marketing the way you were two years ago, you’re going to get even further behind in 2010.

Here’s a quote from Kelsey,

Yes, I would agree that if 97% of consumers go online before they go shopping locally, we have hit an inflection point and it’s time for a change in the way we help our dealers advertise locally.   Other studies we’ve cited on this blog show that SMBs have understood this consumer dynamic for some time and now are more likely to spend advertising dollars online than in traditional mediums.   A dealer’s biggest challenges are that they don’t know where to advertise online or  how to advertise online.    And, that’s where a good brand comes in to help.  If you have an adbuilder for traditional media now is the time to add digital media outputs for your dealers.   Banner ads, landing pages for local Google ad campaigns, local fan pages for Facebook, outbound email campaigns and more.  If you don’t have an online adbuilder for your retailers now is definitely the time to start one and make sure digital is a big part of what you offer.  It doesn’t get much more definitive than 97%.

Here’s an interesting chart from the DMA where the ROI for a printed catalog just doesn’t measure up to the what other tools are available to marketers today.

Seeing this I don’t think anyone would say that printed catalogs should go away, but we should make sure of two things.  First, if we do a printed catalog do we drive consumers to a website to help sell our products and to better track the results?  Secondly, do we have these other bases covered?  Especially email, search and Internet display.

The Internet has become much better at determining  where the consumer is when they reach our site or respond to a printed catalog, search ad or a display ad.  So why not add local dealer information and local promotions to our efforts and get an even better ROI?  (Now the boss leaves the company because you get his job).

Here’s why I tell SMBs to concentrate their limited resources on Google Local Search for now and we’ll wait and see about Bing.

Google beats Bing by 6.6 times in February.

So, with limited dollars and limited time to manage a local search campaign I suggest that SMBs cover the inventory of Google AdWords in their market first before going after Bing.  I recommend the same thing to brand managers who are trying to help their local retailers sell more product.  Give them the tools and incentive to work with Google first.

After getting Google covered I would probably make sure some other bases are covered before  Bing anyway.  To do a Google Local Campaign properly requires a good landing page, so I would connect that same landing page to my brand site.   Consumers looking for a place to buy locally would then be exposed to my local retailers’ story, which may include a promotion of some kind.

How about banner ads before Bing, too?   And, email campaigns?  Facebook fan pages and ads?   The list goes on and on.

John Potter, Postmaster General, struck a different tone on Tuesday. It was direct and unvarnished. He talked about the staggering shortfalls in postal volume and revenue — and the need for immediate and drastic change.

“It’s reflective of a macro change in how society communicates.” Potter stated, referring to the dramatic change brought on by online and digital technology.

This wasn’t some little internal study either.  Three big consulting firms played major roles: Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Accenture, McKinsey.  This was big and serious.

The main story line in the press had the USPS predicting mail volume would fall 15% from 177 billion pieces in 2009 to 150 billion pieces in 2020; closing branches and limiting delivery to five days a week.

What wasn’t widely reported were some darker statistics:

* BCG surveyed different groups to make their forecasts.  Commercial mailers predicted a 15% drop in their volume, likely anticipating their own plans to move to online bill payment and outbound email.  Consumers predicted a drop of 22% based upon their personal use of the mail system.  BCG then used something called the “Broadband EU Leader” trend to project a 34% drop in volume by 2020.  The last trend being more than double what the press reported.

* Real Revenue per Delivery Point is predicted to plummet by almost 50% by 2020 — from $1.80 today to a $1.00 in 2020.

What are the implications for marketing?

1. Get used to a constant drumbeat of higher postal rates and lower service levels as we march toward 2020

2. Expect ROI for mailed campaigns to be increasingly harder to hit as rates increase

3. Make sure your lists are up-to-date and squeaky clean.  Smaller micro-targets will become the norm vs. the exception as mailers seek to mine pockets of gold in their lists

4. Prepare now to transition your corporate and channel support programs online.  The Ad builder system for your channel partners needs online options now to anticipate the trend and get them comfortable with those options (local online search, email, online video, text messaging, local Facebook campaigns).

The sooner your channel starts thinking this way the better.  Your leadership from marketing is critical.  The check is no longer “in the mail”.

Two recent examples come from Facebook, last week they offered advertisers the opportunity to buy ads limited to certain cities.  Now, according to The New York Times Facebook is going to allow users to share their location with their friends and they will allow developers to offer location-based services to Facebook users.

The Internet has come a long way since the days of trying to find Carmen Sandiego on the World Wide Web.   Way back then we didn’t have broadband connections so we didn’t know where our site visitors were coming from.  Now we do and so does Google, Facebook, Twitter, MSN, Yahoo and every other portal out there.

In the “old days” we only had local TV, radio and newspapers that were geocoded by the strength of their signal or circulation limitations.

It’s time for brand managers to provided digital outputs to local retailers that are loaded with great content, surrounded by appropriate branding, and then enhanced with the local dealers own story and promotion.

Dealer microsites, e-promo pages, local Google landing pages, Facebook fan pages, Facebook ads, banner ad landing pages, the list goes on and on and grows every day.

The best news is that local digital output costs much less to publish than traditional media and our tests prove they have a much better ROI, too.

I’m not advocating that brands stop using traditional media in local markets, only that they move dollars from traditional to digital or risk losing relevance to dealers and consumers.

This is just another opportunity for your dealers to present themselves online in their local market.  Granted, this is only for some cities right now but the path is clear, Facebook is going be a competitor to local newspapers for ad revenue.

Facebook, like local Google AdWord campaigns, offers a compelling case to your dealers and to you as a brand manager.  Simply stated, these ads are cheaper, better and faster than what can be delivered by the print version of the newspaper.

The challenge for you as a brand manager is to encourage, control  and constantly improve these ads by putting digital output features in your ad builder and monitoring the results.

]]> http://blog.jgsullivan.com/2010/03/05/facebook-offers-local-ads/feed/ http://blog.jgsullivan.com/2010/03/04/local-online-advertising-growing-at-expense-of-local-traditonal-advertising/ http://blog.jgsullivan.com/2010/03/04/local-online-advertising-growing-at-expense-of-local-traditonal-advertising/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:13 +0000 John Sullivan http://blog.jgsullivan.com/?p=2051 It’s still a tough market out here for local and national advertising spending but it’s clear that local online advertising is going to take dollars away from traditional advertising in the coming years.  Here’s how eMarketer sees things evolving.

It looks like local traditional advertising will decline each year while local online spending will start growing this year and until the foreseeable to reach 25% of the total spent in 2014.

I’m not sure how they make these projections but as Google adds “Nearby” to local search results and printed newspapers go more online and as retailers build Facebook fan pages these numbers can shift to even more being spent locally online.

You can now use the “Show options” link to request that your search results show sites in your area.  In the example above, a consumer looking for new tires can select “nearby” to find the sites of local dealers in the organic search results and the adwords are location based, too.

This now puts even more pressure on local dealers to have better internet sites and thereby makes it incumbent upon brand managers to help those dealers with brand friendly content.

Because of broadband connections we now know the consumers’ geographic location without having to ask and can feed content based on that information (that wasn’t the case in the earlier days of the internet).

This is another reason for local advertising dollars to shift from newspaper ads to local Google adword campaigns and to better dealer sites.   Think of the dealer site or microsite you provide for him as a newspaper ad that can be seen 24/7 in the local market without having to pay any publication costs.

The challenge is to coordinate the dealer’s site with your brand and all of the other mediums a dealer uses to advertise.  The good news is that online adbuilders for dealers can make all of this possible.

Here’s how it works to protect the brand and the dealer.

The idea is to have lots of shopping information on Homefurnishings.com for consumers just starting the process.

If the consumer decides to look for a dealer, they have a microsite for each dealer that combines the relevant shopping information appropriate to what that dealer sells along with dealer information including contact, promotions, all brands carried and more.

If the consumer is interested in a specific brand they have a microsite for sponsoring brands that has a dealer locator that links to a dealer microsite with the apporpriate soft copy, contact and promotions but only for that brand.   This site also works in the brand dealer locator for consumers who enter the system from brand.com

If the consumer starts at the dealer’s local site, the microsite adds all the soft copy to the dealer’s site.

It’s rather complicated at first but in this age of digital content it is a great way to help consumers find the right dealer and brand in a system that leverages soft sell information while protecting dealers and brands every step of the way.

You can’t do this with traditional marketing tools.