What Are The Costs For Ads, And How You Can Cash In From Non Traditional Marketing?
Local Online Advertising or web ad costs only can make sense if it is compared to older “traditional” styles of advertising that were the thing to do back in the 1970-2000.
Every marketing campaign consists of different ideas, because each is designed to fit a goal. Let’s first decide on a minimum marketing program for demonstration. Bear in mind, what worked 20 years ago most assuredly will not work hardly at all today.
The Ad is a form of communication intended to influence expected viewers, readers or listeners to purchase or take some action upon specific products, ideas, or services.
With that in mind; let’s say that you need to boost your prospective traffic by three hundred each week.
First you need to establish; Are there enough potential patrons out there, that would like to buy your product? Then, you will need to implement a campaign that will bring in 300+ eligible likely Clients, and stay within your budget.
You will need to designate a “cost for each buyer”. This cost will help tell you the ROI for the ad.
Traditional Ads:
Cost for each guest is extremely complicated for traditional marketing because the people you try to influence may or may not want to even purchase your product and you have no way of knowing if you are contacting enough prospective patrons with your ad to attain your potential.
Showing your commercial to people that have no interest in your product, is a waste of your funds!
Long-established methods are entirely based on luck that the customer will catch your ad and trigger a “buy” response.
Long-established ads do not have conformational behaviors, so that you may not know if your commercial money convinced three customers or three, definitely a “shotgun” idea in ads.
What established ad people will say; “We can put your commercial in front of million prospects and (maybe) that will be enough to pull in the three hundred customer to your store provide the visitors that you need”.
Let’s say for a instance that you will spend one thousand dollars for a news paper commercial every week that buys you two columns wide by three inch tall ad on page 3 of the “Comics section” (Note: a $1,000 ad is not going on the first page).
Will your targeted customer find you on that piece of paper? If so, how do you know the prospect that is coming through the door saw you ad? If your prospect did not see the commercial, then you misusing one thousand dollars. In fact, that one thousand dollars you wasted this week, will again be shelled out for each week you run the ad.
If five prospects that saw your commercial and came in this week, then your cost per visitor would be:
“Ad Costs” divided by “Likely Visitors” or one thousand dollars divided by 5 visitors or two hundred dollars, that’s for EACH VISITOR.
So let’s say you have an extra ordinary 1 in 5 “visitor conversion rate,” one out of every 5 prospective visitors actually purchase your goods. That would make your cost for EACH customer: one thousand dollars divided by Five visitors times five prospective visitors “needed” to make one sale = $1,000 dollars.
You should be merchandising something that has over one thousand dollars revenue or you will be loosing money very soon.
Let’s look at the Ad Costs:
- Local home shows; average $20K for 4 shows a year.
- Direct Mail; $1000+ month.
- Phone Book; average size; $1000 to $5000 Each month.
- T.V.; $25K to $75K Annually for local spots.
- Billboards; artwork $500 – $2000 Then $500 to $5000 rental per month.
- Radio ads; start at $100 each spot in “package”; depending on market size.
- News Papers; $1000+ each ad.
A Deliberate Look at the Conventional Media’s Future:
Most days, you will see phone books and news papers are folding, and several phone books are changing to “internet” presentations. There’s your 1st. clue that local internet marketing is where most people get info now.
Home shows are still good as targeted customers will stop by and “experience” the wears.
Direct mail expenditure is on the rise as US postage and copy-work costs are going up. Large amount of direct mail goes from mail box to garbage and only the US Postal service makes a profit from the postage for delivery.
TV and Radio are having a difficult time mustering listeners owing too all the web sites, even as Radio and TV “market place” contracts, they still have to cover their costs, so the prices can only go up for those marketers still using radio and TV.
Billboards are a bright spot as a more dynamic message can be viewed on LED signs. But the cost for LED devices needs to be amortized somehow, so your expenditure will go up. For a short time I have even seen “Moving Billboards” on vehicles. How can anyone ever figure ROI on that?
Quickly stated; with long-established marketing you get to spend a all of your profits for a “spotty”, at best, return on investments. Most of these 20th century out of date devices will not make it for long in today’s informed world, where most eyes are on nearby internet ads.
In the next part I will discuss how Local internet marketing and new equipment are changing the marketing trade, and how you can save capital with web local ads.
Exceptional appreciation to CNN for providing the statistics.
Next in the series: “What are the costs for Local Web Marketing Part II”
Learn more about the Top 7 costly mistakes people make when buying advertising. Visit Local Online Advertising where I have a FREE report on how to avoid those very mistakes and SAVE THOUSANDS of dollars.