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Your Marketing Needs a Change of Perception!

I read an interesting quote the other day, “what worked 2 years ago in marketing, will not work today”. I wish I could find where I read it, but the quote stands out more than where it came from. For some reason this really struck a cord with me because of what I see when it comes to local businesses and their marketing. Since I have been studying internet marketing for several years now, I have seen vast changes in how people market themselves online. I have also seen where people have been early adopters of internet marketing and been able to grow their business exponentially. Which brings me to my original point, your marketing needs a change of perception.

First let me say, if you are doing the same thing today that you were doing 2 years ago, you are probably not seeing great results. All I do for marketing now is all internet based marketing, which is vastly different from what I was doing 2 years ago. I was still dumping a good bit of money into print advertising 2 years ago, which I couldn’t track nor did I see great results from. Are you still doing print advertising? Have you considered internet advertising? Have you cut back on your print advertising and put the difference into internet marketing?

Why you need a change of perception is because for many business owners they are still doing the exact same thing because it is comfortable. But is it making any marketing difference? Are people buying what ever it is that you are marketing? I have sales people calling me that I used to advertise with every year, I ask them all the same questions now. Can you track how many people will see my ad? Can you track clicks on the ad? Is this internet based only or is it just a print ad?

With your current marketing efforts, are you able to track how many people see your ad? This is why I love online advertising such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads and even ads on Patch.com. I can track how many people see the ad, how many people click on the ad and even how many people call, email or buy from the ad! You can’t do this with traditional print advertising, well you can if you run a coupon or if you remember to ask your new customers where they heard about you. Even being a marketer I sometimes forget to ask people how they heard about me or my services. But at least I can pull up my tracking data and see how they ended up on my website!

I like asking the question of “can you track clicks on an ad”, when people call me, because most of them are print advertisers. Some of the sales people have no clue what I am even talking about, which is sad. But you have to remember they probably fall into that category of doing the same thing they were doing 2 years ago. They also need a change of perception!

Am I saying give up completely on print advertising? Not at all. For some businesses it still works for them and as long as they are tracking their return and it is doubling what they are putting into it, then in my opinion it is worth it. If I spend $500 on a print ad, then I need to make $1000 in profit for the ad to have been worth it. In profit is the key there, I am talking about net profit not gross profit. I am a stickler when it comes to this because I can spend $150 in ads on Facebook and hit that $1000 mark easily. So if I am going to spend money any where else I have to double what I spent.

Now why would I advertise any where else if I can do that with Facebook ads? Because what worked 2 years ago doesn’t work today, that is why! I believe you constantly need to be testing new places to advertise so that when the next big thing hits, then you will be ahead of the game. Now, with that being said I am going to tell you of 3 places you need to be advertising right now, based on certain criteria. I should really save this info for a class or paid workshop, but I want to give you some great info today, since we just had thanksgiving or you can call it an early Christmas present…

Number 1 – Twitter! – Now you won’t hear me pushing Twitter too much, mostly because the businesses I work with primarily aren’t looking at this target market. But if your niche is 18 to 25 year olds that are smart phone savy, then you need to be advertising on Twitter. I would honestly love to work with someone that is after this niche market so that I can track the results from a campaign. This is a huge market and will probably get better results than a Facebook campaign. Which it hurts me to say that, because I love Facebook marketing. So if this is your market and you start advertising in this arena, pop me a message so that I can hear about your success!

Number 2 – LinkedIn – This is at the top of my list for 2013 in my marketing efforts, directly below Facebook of course. If you do any type of B2B marketing or if your niche is business professionals, then you need to be spending some time on LinkedIn. I will post a blog about it once I am further along with my marketing efforts on there, but I have already started connecting with people I could have never met other wise. I will be spending time cultivating relationships and placing ads on the site. I suggest you do the same if you rely on any type of B2B interaction.

Number 3 – The Patch – Now for most of you, you are probably reading this on the Patch and not on my website. Already see my point? The other side to this is that Patch advertising is not that expensive and is a great way to get your name and business in front of a ton of people who may have never heard of you before! I recently ran an ad on my local Patch and it shocked me the results, from views to click through rate to which ad performed better. Honestly I was a bit surprised by the results of this short experiment. Now the key to advertising on the Patch is a proper landing page! I am building a Patch workshop that is coming up and I am going to go over all the free stuff you can do on Patch, the paid side and also the sales funnel, that includes discussing landing pages. If you want to know when this class is going to be and where head over to our website and get on our email list. www.freskosmedia.com

Have you thought about advertising on any of those? If not, then you need a change of perception! I really hope that this has helped you open up your mind to some different and extra ways you can be advertising your business. Feel free to like us on Facebook for up to date info on anything and everything I have going on. So until next time, look around at different and better ways you could be marketing your business, there may be something you could add that would make a huge difference in your income!