A quick glance through the local papers and the same small businesses appear week after week. The main issue with local papers is their short shelf life – you pay for a week’s advertising and that’s all you get. Stop paying, and the phone stops ringing immediately. This is the biggest drawback of newspaper advertising and one that can have significant consequences for companies struggling to pay their weekly marketing bills.
We conducted an exercise where we examined ten different business sectors with more than one company advertising in our local paper. The ten business types we looked at were as follows:
- Oven Cleaning
- Roofing Contractors
- Water Softeners
- Blinds
- Double Glazing
- Coach Trips
- Bed Suppliers
- Restaurants
- Used Car Dealers
- Carpet Suppliers
We then Googled the companies that were advertising in the newspaper to see how their websites ranked in the search engines, and the results were quite shocking. Across the 10 sectors above, we checked 33 individual companies:
- 56% of businesses didn’t have a free Google Places listing
- 44% of businesses didn’t appear on the first page of Google at all
- 21% of the businesses didn’t even have a website
Considering that most consumers (81%) access the Internet every day, it seems astonishing that these businesses are overlooking such a massive opportunity to gain new customers. Assuming each of the companies we researched spends approximately £100 every week, that’s a marketing commitment of over £5,000 every year!
The reality is that these companies could spend less than half of that and achieve better results. The other advantage of advertising online is that you don’t have a continuous drain on your bank account. Once the website is set up and optimised, it doesn’t require a huge amount of work to keep it running smoothly. Of course, you could spend money on additional SEO, but even at its most basic level, a good quality website will provide a business with a steady stream of new customers. Contact us to know more!