Advertising Beyond Web 2.0

Most small and medium companies use web site internet advertising on the internet. It seems they have gate-crashed into what was the domain of the big and powerful enterprises. Why? Well, it can be very lucrative if you know what you’re doing.

We use the internet every day looking for information and if we find what we need, even buy stuff at a click of button. But there are still people who don’t use the internet. A significant percentage of the world population does not use the internet or engine marketing search techniques, let alone being skilled at it.

Be amazed at these stats:

As on June 30, 2009 about 73.9% North Americans used the internet, while Europe recorded a population penetration of just 50.1%.

(Information from Nielsen/NetRatings, published on InternetWorldStats.com)

There has been a phenomenal growth of 362.3% over the period from 2000 till 2009. But consider this. Of the estimated world population of 6.77 billion, just 24.7% use the internet. Where does that leave your business? If you are into internet advertisement and lost your footing over other traditional ways of marketing, you are probably leaving loads of money on the table for your competitors.

Advertising on the search engines is a great idea. It has the potential to generate market on the internet. Internet savvy people who are looking for your product or service would find you. What happens to the millions who just haven’t heard of “keywords”? They wouldn’t have a clue how to find you even if you had exactly what they needed. They just didn’t know what to ask for.

You might have a highly optimized website to generate sales on the internet, but you wouldn’t want to lose out on customers who still follow up on postcard mailings. In fact, there are companies who buy this information and have over a million addresses to send their new campaigns to.

Growth over the internet can be tremendous, but if we advertised only on the internet, we would get business only from people who are already looking for our product or service. Come to think of it, buyers over the internet would never have Googled the word “postcard mailings” because they would consider direct mail out of circulation and outdated, even businessmen.

If you are in a Business-to-Consumer industry, the rules of the game remain the same. A potential client would type in "jewelry” to find something for his wife. He will find you. But if you mail postcards, you may generate repeat orders from clients who would otherwise not have known your products existed.

Consider all your marketing options. You might be getting web advertising free. Web 2.0 can be big and Web 3.0 even bigger, but do not forget to Include direct mail along with web site internet advertising in your marketing plans. You will see more healthy sales numbers this time around.