Before I moved into website development, I was working as a graphic designer and mostly in print. Looking back over the work, time, teams & budgets involved, it’s amazing how much the internet has changed every aspect of marketing especially when it comes to advertising…
Of course, it’s now one of the best ways to successfully advertise your business, services, blog or whatever. I thought it would be interesting to note some of the biggest changes I think I’ve seen since the good ol’ CMYK days!
Open 24 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week!
The internet never closes down for the end of the business day or the weekend. Your businesses information and contact information is available at any time basically you can now have a salesperson working for you 24/7 for almost free. This means that potential clients can research and decide if they want to do business with you, without having to contact you. Before, the only time a potential client could inquire about your business was during business hours, unless you wanted to give out your private phone numbers and cell phone numbers. Now, they can send you an email, and you can answer it at your convenience.
More Information Then Ever Before
The internet does not constrain you to a certain number of words. You literally have unlimited amounts of space to talk about, advertise, and display information about your business. Before, you would have to fit what you felt was the most important information into a 30 second commercial, or a specific size of brochure.
Global Users
Before the internet, you were required to spend large amounts of money to advertise anywhere but your local area. You had to rely on people driving by or hearing/seeing one of your local ads in order to do business with them. The internet however, is reachable by every country on the planet, and a website or online ad usually costs exactly the same whether people from your hometown, or people from the other side of the world are viewing it. WOW, How much would that have cost 20 years ago?!
Changeable Content
When creating a business brochure or flyer, you had to make sure you only put none-dateable information in there, because after all, once they are printed, you cannot change the information. This created potentially large advertising costs, and sometimes many wasted ads due to changing information (or typos!). Likewise, you were unable to change the text or print on a radio or TV ad until that ad ran its campaign. Online, changing information is as simple as point and click. Your phone number changed? Simple, log onto your website or ad and change it. Boom.
Small Cost, Large Results
We all know how expensive traditional advertising campaigns can be. A simple B/W ad in the local newspaper can cost say $100-200 a week (with limited to no targeting), a billboard around $2000-3000 a month (or a lot more dependent on location, of course), again with limited targeting. However, advertising online is far less expensive. For example: a static, 5 page website can cost you around $2500, and about $200 a year after that (that’s 24-7-365, imagine paying a salesperson for those hours!). Search engines allows visitors to search for, and find your services for free. If you choose to advertise your website with these search engines, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. That allows you to control the amount of money, and you only pay for the people that actually want to visit website (very targeted).
Looking back there’s no doubt the internet really has changed everything when it comes to marketing and advertising. It’s now much more attainable and affordable for pretty much anybody willing to put the time in.
If you are new to the medium, you may want to consider hiring a professional marketing & design company to help develop and maintain your ads and website for you. What a coincidence! You are currently on a website that offers those exact services! Give us a call on 786. 379. 4041
