The advertising agency of the future will have to adapt to the changing ways of the business world. Instead of distinguishing themselves between specific disciplines, such as just a public relations agency, or just a direct mail advertiser, or just an outdoor advertising agency, or billboard advertising agency to get even more specific, advertising agencies of the future will have to broaden their horizons. They will have to become full on all-solutions marketing companies. A recent post on a great blog called Actionable Insights by Covario explains in full detail why a simple advertising agency may be a thing of the past. In the future, a marketing solutions company will be the answer to a business's problems.
Sao Paulo has now joined in the anti-outdoor advertising parade. The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil has banned billboard advertising, flashing neon signs, and electronic scrolling panels. As a result, fierce debate has sparked among the city's inhabitants.
City planners, architects, and environmental advocates have hailed the new legislation as bringing the city "one step closer to an imagined urban ideal" as they applaud the banning of visual pollution. One columnist calls it a "rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash".
On the other hand, however, advertisers and business groups oppose the decision. They say that free expression will be inhibited, jobs will be lost, and consumers will have less information about which products to buy. They argue that the availability of information is the essence of capitalism and consumer culture.
The new law also places rules on store signs and even on mobile outdoor advertising, such as on the side of a bus, or banners on airplanes and blimps. A court called the law unconstitutional because the federal government controls airspace, not the city government.
Popular reaction to the legislation has generally been very supportive, as the bill passed by with a whopping 45 to 1 vote. However, full service ad agencies and marketing companies fear that the legislation will profoundly negatively affect them, ultimately causing a loss in revenue and by extension, employment. There are 13,000 billboards that have been installed illegally, but the advertising agencies argue that they are merely scapegoats, and the real blame lies with another entity, possibly corrupt government officials taking bribes.
Global advertising fell more than expected in the first half of the year but the downturn could be bottoming out, a leading media agency said on Monday.
ZenithOptimedia said global ad expenditure in 2009 would drop 9.9 percent following the poor first half, compared with a predicted fall of 8.5 percent made in July.
"However, this downgrade almost entirely relates to first-half activity," the agency said in a report. "Since then improvements in economic confidence have been accompanied by positive signals from media owners that the downturn is bottoming out.
"We are still confident that the second half of the year will be much less painful for the ad market than the first half, and expect the market to hit bottom before the end of 2009."
Another media network, Carat AEGS.L, said in October it also expected global ad spend to fall almost 10 percent in 2009 before a return to slight growth in 2010.
Zenith said it now forecast a recovery in 2010 of 0.5 percent, down from its earlier forecast of 1.6 percent growth, with developing markets leading the way with 7.8 percent growth.
Developed markets, which are defined as North America, Western Europe and Japan, are forecast to shrink another 2.9 percent.
For 2011, Zenith expects 4.3 percent global growth, with developed markets showing a 1.5 percent recovery and developing markets growing 9.8 percent.
Of the different platforms, the Internet is the only medium expected to expand, with 9.2 percent growth forecast for 2009, while all other traditional media is set to shrink.
The report said print advertising, such as newspapers and magazines were in steep decline, with newspaper ad expenditure set to fall 17 percent this year, and magazine spend down 20 percent.
"By 2011 we forecast newspaper ad expenditure to be 25 percent below its 2007 peak, while magazine ad expenditure is 28 percent below its own peak," the report said.
"Prospects for other traditional media are more encouraging: we expect television advertising, cinema and outdoor advertising to return to growth in 2010, followed by radio in 2011."
In the last post, I wrote about optimizing your website to tell Google and your visitors where you are and what you do. But another important online place where it's absolutely critical to clearly identify where you are and what you do is your local business profile on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.
Your Categories
In Google Maps, you can categorize your business in up to 5 categories. They may be standard categories that are provided by Google Maps or those that you can create yourself. Use 1-2 of the standard Google Maps categories that best fit your business, and then create 3-4 that contain your best keyword terms plus the geography terms for which you want to be found.
For example, as a New Jersey marketing company, we classify ourselves in the already established categories of Advertising, and Marketing. For our other four categories we use the top keyword phrases for which we want to be found, such as cable advertising, outdoor advertising, radio advertising, print advertising, traditional media advertising, or automotive ad agency.
The categories you choose may be based on any criteria that are important to you. Some suggestions are your most profitable procedures or the categories in which your strongest competitors have categorized themselves. The categories may also be based on some other criteria known only to you.
Use geographic terms in your categories in order to make it completely clear to Google where you do business. Using the names of nearby areas may also help your site rank better for those searches. For example, our office is in Westfield, NJ, but most searchers use "New Jersey" or "NJ" in their queries, so we use New Jersey terms in our categories instead of Westfield terms.
However, Yahoo Local and Bing Local do not allow you to create your own categories. So you must choose as many categories as you are allowed, picking the most appropriate and most important first.
Your Descriptions
Also use geography terms within the description area of your profiles, where you have complete control of what is written. These descriptions are crawled and indexed by the local spiders, so make certain they find your most important geographic terms within them.
Your Attributes
Attributes (only in Google Maps) allow you to go crazy with terms to tell spiders and humans what you do and where you do it. You can, in essence, create and name a field whatever you want and then populate it with terms describing that property.
Almost every business pulls people from both its immediate location and surrounding areas. So, you could create a field named Locations Served and list the towns and neighborhoods near you and from which your business typically draws customers.
Some business, like plumbing, carpet cleaning, lawn care, and pet sitting go to the customer instead of customers coming to them. For a business like this, you could title a field Service Areas and list the places where you are willing to travel to provide your services.
You can also include attributes that allow you to use keyword terms that contain geographic modifiers. For example, if you have an advertising agency in New Jersey, you could create a field titled New Jersey Marketing Services and populate it with terms like "New Jersey marketing", "traditional media in NJ", "best ad agency NJ", "online marketing consultants NJ", "public relations NJ", and "New jersey retail advertising agency". This is an effective way to help you rank for long-tail terms that apply to where you are and what you do.
Your Coupons
Although not every business type has been traditionally associated with coupons, creative entrepreneurs are finding ways to use them to their benefit. Nearly every business can offer some sort of discount or value-added coupon for its goods or services. For inspiration you can look around to see what your competitors are doing with coupons. Then, when you create your coupons, include your best keyword terms plus your location in the offers.
It's highly likely that attributes from Google Maps Local Business Listings and coupons from all of the platforms are pushed out to other places on the Web, such as Google Base and coupon Web sites, so the impact can be very far-ranging.
Local business listings are designed to help searchers find businesses in particular geographic locations. Make it easy for Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local to tell where you are and what you do to increase the odds they will find your business when a relevant search is made.
Traditional media shares are on the rise. Since the beginning of July, the top stock has been Gannett, the publisher of USA Today. In fact, the stock is up an incredible 229% since last quarter. Gannett even announced that their profits will be more than what was expected. Even companies like The New York Times and CBS are enjoying a rise in their stock prices, TNYT increasing by 50%, and CBS increasing by 80%.
What does this mean? Well, it means that the economic recession is slowly but surely coming to an end. Of course the economy will not improve right away. It will take time. But the good news for marketing companies is that there will be a rise in ad spending, even if it's a slow rise. There are predictions that ad spending will increase by 1.5% worldwide. And upcoming worldwide events such as the Winter Olympics, the World Cup Soccer Tournament, and the U.S. mid-term elections are expected to increase spending.
As a result, television advertising and outdoor advertising are expected to make a swift comeback. Of course this doesn't mean that all of our worries will go away. But it does mean that there is now hope at the end of the tunnel.
Many US state governments, and even governments of other countries, are now labeling outdoor advertising as "visual pollution". The latest government to ban outdoor advertising based on this label is the city of Chennai in India. However, the city also acknowledged the fact that outdoor advertising plays a vital role in its own income tax revenue and employment rate.
Other governments that have banned outdoor advertising based on the notion that it is "visual pollution" are the state of Maine, the cities of of Sao Paulo, and Los Angeles, which recently upheld its ban in a courtroom decision against a media group. Auckland, New Zealand, and parts of South Africa are also following suit and are pursuing bans on outdoor advertising.
Outdoor advertising, and more specifically billboard advertising, are integral parts of media for many advertisers. Billboard advertising is also vital in supporting the print advertising part of the industry.
While it is completely understandable that a local government would want to ban the potential alcohol or cigarette billboard near a school, it is also necesarry to understand that billboard advertising can serve positive social endeavors, such as aiding in finding missing persons. Everything has a pro and con, and outdoor advertising is no different.
But legislators are increasingly siding with the cons side of the argument. And once digital billboard advertising becomes the norm, legislators may lead an outright crusade against outdoor advertising, labeling it not only as "visual pollution", but also as a "traffic distraction".
The bans on outdoor advertising will have profound consequences for the advertising industry. Revenue streams will drop, which of course will cause unemployment to increase. Let's just hope that legislators don't take an extremist stance on the issue and make unemployment worse than it already is.
Why is data analytics important? Well, have you ever tried to manage something that you haven't measured? You could throw yourself into the deep end of a pool, but if you don't know how to swim then you're going to drown. So how do you stay afloat?You need to invest in measuring and tracking services for all of your web site traffic. Any good full service ad agency with competent online marketing consultants should offer data analytics as a service.
First of all, you need to be able to measure your sheer traffic volume.Traffic volume is the general number of visitors to your website, whether they were online conversions or not.This can give you a clear picture of how many web surfers are even reaching your website, from anywhere on the web.This number is also important because it gives you something to measure everything else against.
Secondly, you need to measure traffic quality.What is the bounce rate of your website?How much time are your visitors spending on your website?These things are important to measure in order to gauge how well your website keeps the attention of its visitors.By measuring this against the traffic volume, you can see what percentage of your visitors is actually staying on your website, versus just looking at it for a couple of seconds and then hitting the back button (or any other way to get off a website so quickly).
Thirdly, you need to determine your traffic sources and measure how many visitors you are getting from each one of those sources.This allows you to see where you are getting your visitors from and enables you to allocate more resources to those traffic sources.You can measure this against traffic quality to see where the most interested visitors are coming from (from which website or link they are being redirected).You can also measure this against traffic volume in order to determine the percentage of visitors from each source.
Fourthly, you need to measure your traffic conversions.Making that sale, i.e. getting that conversion, is the goal of your business.By measuring traffic conversions, you can see how well you are doing in each category.By measuring traffic conversions against all of the above mentioned kinds of data, you can determine where most of your online conversions are coming from, how long each conversion spends on your website, and the percentage of total visitors that become online conversions.
Lastly, you need to determine how often you should analyze these data points.This depends entirely on your business and your industry.It also depends simply on your preference.Some people like to have daily numbers, some like weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, or even annually.The point is that you need to figure out how often you need the data reports in order to be on top of your game.But that is entirely up to you. If you hire an advertising agency, it should give you the option of how frequently you would like to receive your data reports. The best ad agency will analyze your reports for you and tell you how you can improve. But this is of course true not just for internet marketing, but also for traditional media marketing such as television advertising, radio advertising, print advertising, or any outdoor advertising.
Again, these numbers individually won’t mean much.A number by itself is just a number; but together, these numbers will paint a very clear picture of the health of your business.With all of this knowledge, you’ll be able to do everything that is necessary in order for your business to thrive.If you know how to swim, into the deep end you go.
Let’s face it. The economy is still not that great. But there’s an upside to any recession. Businesses now have the opportunity to position themselves for when the market turns around. If you’re in the right position, your business will boom once the recession is over. And even though the economy is down, people still need products/services. So how do you position yourself properly?…DEALS!
“People need deals and deals need people.” You remember that scene in “A Beautiful Mind” when Russell Crowe, er, I mean John Nash, says the best option is the one that benefits both the individuals involved but also the group as a whole? In other words, you need to create deals for your product/service that are mutually beneficial for both the consumer and for you. The economy will stabilize once we’ve reached equilibrium.
And how do we reach that equilibrium, you ask? The WEB! The INTERNET! The entire ONLINE ARENA! Advertising online is the wave of the new century. And now is the best time, if any, to get your business into the 21st century. If you do, you’ll be in the best position when people start buying again. Why? Because there are a lot more people using the web right now than you think. In fact, the web is very quickly becoming the hub of all media. The web allows you to watch TV and movies, listen to the radio, or just download music, talk with friends (and even people you thought you would never see again thanks to a little something called social networking, i.e. Facebook, MySpace), buy pretty much anything you want, pay bills, do all your banking, and even get medical advice. The virtual world is slowly replacing the real one.
Of course that is not to say that traditional media advertising has no place in your marketing strategy. Traditional media, such as print advertising, television advertising, outdoor advertising, or direct mail, still serves the same function it has for years. But the market is rapidly becoming fully virtual. Instead of advertising your big savings deal in any traditional media, you can do it for alot cheaper on the internet. You can market your deals on your own website, on your competitor's websites, on any search engine, or any industry experts' websites in order to gain maximum visibility. And the precision of internet marketing will maximize your ROI since potential leads will all be those that are already interested in your product/service.
In order to fully corner the market, I suggest that you invest in all media, both traditional and online. However, the current economy may force you to be a bit more frugal with your capital. If that is the case, then you should certainly focus more on your web assets.
So when people start buying again, you better be prepared to meet them half-way. And when people start buying again and go online to do so, if your business isn’t online it probably won’t survive. In order to stay in business and meet the demands of the new century, you'll have to have a basic web foundation.
Here's a quick overview of how you can have a successful web foundation:
In the next couple of posts, I’ll give you some tips on how to get your money’s worth from the world of the Internet and advertising online. We'll go over what you'll need in order to have a comprehensive web foundation, including a website, an email marketing campaign, a social networking campaign, a blogging campaign, and search engine marketing. It’ll definitely be worth your investment.
As a way of keeping up with modern times, we have expanded our traditional media efforts into the world of online marketing. We still adhere to the same principles, except we've transposed those principles onto another medium, the internet. As a result, we're not only a traditional media advertising agency, but we're also online marketing consultants. So we not only handle things such as television and radio advertising, outdoor and billboard advertising, and print advertising, but we also handle website design, website development, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and of course email advertising. Just as we can create beautiful and colorful print ads for your business, we can also create beautiful and colorful websites, landing pages, and email blasts for your business. We'll also run blogging campaigns for your business both as a form of public relations and as a means of getting you indexed on major search engines.
We'll run your online marketing campaign for you! Call us at 877-876-2995, or visit our website, or our other blog.
Have you ever been driving down some mysterious highway looking for a place to eat to satisfy your terminal hunger?Then you pass one of those huge outdoor advertising displays that says “Eat At Joe’s” and you think to yourself, “I would love to eat at Joe’s right this second.”Those billboards have a way of reading our minds, don’t they?
Billboard advertising is a great way to let your customer find you, instead of you having to find your customer.There's over 450,000 billboards across the 4,000,000 miles of highway in the country. Think of all that billboard advertising can do for you. We can create numerous memorable billboard ads so thousands, or even millions if it’s in a city, of potential customers can be directed to your business. And we don't just do New Jersey billboard advertising, we do billboard advertising all over the country!
Want your business up on a billboard? Call us! 877-876-2995.
Welcome to BOC Partners, Inc. A unique advertising agency that specializes in both traditional media and online marketing. We consider the term “Ad Agency” a little outdated …like a description used 10 to 20 years ago (think Daren Steven in Bewitched). Our focus is on building traffic, be it showroom traffic, phone traffic, or online traffic. But traffic is only the beginning. We not only practice the art of traffic building, but also the art of increasing conversions while focusing on quality. Located right in the middle of New York City and Philadelphia, we are sitting in two of the top markets in the country, but our great ideas and the best tracking techniques will work anywhere.
Our agency principles have been around for 25 years and that kind of tenure brings the tried and true type of experience that your business can benefit from. We’re not like most marketing companies; we’re more like a consulting firm. We don’t advertise in all arenas just because we can. We’ll figure out what’s best for you, where you can reach the most potential customers, and attack any target marketplace for maximum return. We’re like the military of the marketing world. Research, strategy, planning, and execution…mission accomplished.
BOC Partners provides marketing management, creative design, media buying, SEO, and a lot of other proprietary cool things to make your business successful. We focus on all the primary advertising verticals such as outdoor advertising, print advertising, radio advertising, and television advertising. We're even online marketing consultants. Best of all, all of our solutions are measurable and chances are they out perform 4 of the 5 techniques that you are currently using. We don’t like tooting our own horn (as you can tell by this paragraph), but we are the best at what we do. Everybody seems to be blogging these days, so we figured we’d start too. Besides, we think we have a lot to share with the world, well at least the business world anyway. If you would like to consult with us, call us at 877-876-2995.
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