What does Advertising Growth Forcast Mean for Small Businesses

ZenithOptimedia’ Advertising Growth forecasts for 2008 have been downgraded from 3.7% to 3.5% for North America due to the increased credit crisis coupled with high energy and commodity prices that are adding to the countries inflation. They estimate internet advertising to grow at 26.7% and will capture 10% of overall advertising dollars be years end.

How does this affect small businesses that must make strategic decisions about rebalancing their budgets? Do they cut back on advertising? Should their marketing strategies change? Where should they go for help?

The rebalancing of budgets is something that every business does on a regular basis, even though we do see it happening more often through an inflationary period. What small businesses need to remember is that is the time to up their marketing budget (or at least maintain it’s original levels) if at all possible. With the typical consumer watching each $ more closely in a down economy, they need to increase their presence. The typical rule of thumb is that it takes 6 impressions to get a targeted consumer to react. I believe that # rises to 8-10 impressions before they consider reacting.

If a marketing strategy is going to change, it should be in a way that increases the total # of impressions across the board. This may mean you decrease your print advertising and finally look into that increased online ad presence or video billboard advertising. What is a must as well when changing your business’ marketing strategy is to generate PR. There are a multitude of free press release services out there, as well as companies that will help you write a solid release. The rewards can be huge. Not only does it increase your brand awareness, but increases your internet presence as well.

The final suggestion for the day is that you take a good, close look at your website. Be honest about what you are seeing. Your website is or should be the face of your company when it comes to your online presence. Most small businesses tend to thin k that once the site is built that they don’t need to include it in their marketing budget. A website needs to constantly evolve and have depth added. You want to attract repeat visitors - not to mention giving the spiders and crawlers new tidbits to latch onto.