The legacy methods of advertising such as radio ads, TV ads and print ads are pretty much dead. Unless you have money for a great campaign design, using these advertising vehicles is a waste of money. Pay attention. Even if you can buy a lot of exposure, without a remarkable message, you will not see so much as a break-even return.
The new marketing is saturated and consumers are starting to push back. They no longer tolerate ads smothering the screen as they catch up with friends. Facebook isn’t fun like it used to be. Now, as a publicly traded company, Facebook is under pressure to make money. We get ads everywhere. The consumers don’t like it.
Who does like it?
People who want to sell marketing. Most of them anyway. It’s easy money. Pay them and you get a Facebook page with 1,000 likes. Big deal. You will spend a lot of time trying to get activity from those 1,000 people who “like” you. The return on investment is poor.
Google has changed the rules of SEO so many times this year that SEO is almost impossible to ‘buy”. You must earn your search position by supplying relevant content. You don’t need anyone to do this if you can write at 5th grade level and have something to say. Unfortunately, that eliminates most small businesses.
So what does work? How can you market your business successfully?
1. Differentiation