SMEs ignoring online marketing
Small business still fail to understand the potential of online marketing despite Ofcom research revealing that online advertising overtook spend on mainstream TV in the UK last year.
The research showed that online advertising rose by an average 70% in each of the last five years to create an industry worth £2.8bn, more than the total advertising revenue received by ITV1, Channel 4, S4C and Five in 2007.
But according to Steve Barnes, chief executive of Infoserve, many smaller companies are unaware of this trend and are particularly missing out on paid-for search advertising, where search engines bring up companies when someone searches for a particular term.
"Paid-for search can produce instant results that can immediately be measured, which small firms find incredibly useful when they have limited budgets," he said.
"The benefit of paid-for search advertising is that you can target the very people you are aiming for, at the exact time that they are looking for your service or product.
"No other form of advertising allows you to do this to this extent yet many small businesses across the board are simply not taking advantage of this internet advertising boom."
Post Date: August 15th, 2008