Lots of fishermen tend to waste time fishing in unproductive waters just because of “the big one” that legend holds was caught and got away 25 years ago. If the legend is true, the time that has passed far exceeds the life expectancy of the fish, even if it wasn’t caught by another angler in the interim. Then, of course, the pond itself could have died, the victim of acid rain, eutrophication, or another type of pollution. The same logic applies to advertising buys. In simple terms, times have changed.

Just as a successful fisherman will spend time fishing in a productive habitat, any advertiser should focus ad buys on media outlets where prospective buyers spend their time. A Harris Interactive survey released in late 2009 found that 80% of U.S. adults are Internet users, and these users spend an average of 13 hours per week online. Of that time, the number of hours on social networking sites (the vast majority of which is on Facebook) now exceeds the amount of time either reading e-mail or conducting the (previously) conventional “search and surf” routine. Another recently released report, the American Time Use Survey issued by the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that the average adult American spends over 19 hours per week watching television. Those numbers are actually in decline, primarily cannibalized by Internet usage (where, ironically, a significant volume of television programming is now being viewed online). With readership levels down, recent statistics have also shown that the average American who reads a daily newspaper spends only 15 minutes per day (but up to 90 minutes on Sundays). Similarly, and with circulations spiraling downward, the average reader spends a scant 45 minutes reading the average magazine. Keep in mind that your target demographics (strongly considering factors such as age) will strongly skew any of the numbers which may be applicable in your particular instance. For example, newspaper readership has been in steady decline across all population segments, but the amount of time spent by younger people reading newspapers is virtually nonexistent. At the same time, it is fair to say that cell phone usage and text messaging is skyrocketing, particularly among those same younger demographics that eschew newspapers.

Comprehensive and current statistics on how we spend our time are not easy to find. If the information was easily accessible, it would probably be outdated as soon as it was published. We can sometimes only work with bits and pieces and get a general feeling for overall trends. For a general feeling with a comical spin and graphic effects, I would suggest a visit to the “Life and Time Spent by the Average Joe Blow” post on the Canadian blog, “Life in the Fast Lane”. (Seriously, check out that blog, run by Fast Lane Transport, Ltd. in Edmonton, Alberta, a freight trucking company serving Canada’s four western provinces.) In general, if you are trying to reach a mass market but cannot afford (or afford to wait for) the Super Bowl, which of the following makes more sense: Online advertising (where 80% of adults are spending 13 hours per week) or direct mail (where we each probably spend an average of 3 minutes per day deciding what gets a second glance and what goes into the recycling bin unopened)? Advertising over the years has relied upon the type of inferential data which has only proven to be slightly better than this type of generalization. Have you ever noticed how many erectile dysfunction commercials have text that reads, “See our ad in Golf Magazine”? The presumption, no doubt correct and based upon expensive market research, is that the demographics of the two markets overlap. With the advent of social media, where users volunteer and share a wealth of demographic information, we now have access to the type of real data which allows target marketing to go beyond inference and finally live up to its real name.

Advertising generally falls into one of two major categories: Advertising which is intended to fulfill an existing demand, and advertising which is intended to create a demand. Brand advertising is a textbook example of the latter, accounting for 80% of the two-way split. Ideally, your message should be designed to either reach out to consumers who are willing to embrace a new or improved product or service (now most typically as the result of viral marketing and social networking), or effectively introduce yourself to consumers who are already sold on your product or service but are unfamiliar with your company or brand name. When using social networking as a viral marketing tool, it is important for an advertiser to remember that they not be controlling the conversation but simply joining the conversation. Although it may seem contrary to the old rules of the game, it is best to sit back and allow the satisfied users of your product or service to be your most effective spokespersons.

Once you find the right pond, you will be pleased to discover that it is loaded with fish, and those fish are on a feeding frenzy!

When I started in business back in 1980, my primary client base consisted on smaller to medium-sized ski areas in the Northeastern United States. We produced collateral advertising for these clients, most of whom were struggling to hold their own, as their clientele increasingly felt that they had “outgrown” the smaller, more local mountains. The problem was that everybody had skied at one time or another at the “big” resorts in Vermont and out West. As disposable incomes increased, leisure time became more highly valued, and it increasingly seemed to make sense to book a flight to the Rockies or Europe. The small ski areas that have survived are mostly the ones that repositioned themselves within this market. They no longer saw themselves competing against the other nearby mountains but against the marketing of the bigger resorts elsewhere in the region or partway across the globe. As time has gone on, they have further redefined themselves, extending their seasons with golf courses and other non-winter attractions. The fact is that they are no longer just competing against the bigger ski resorts but against foreign travel, the cruise industry, and the full range of options that vie for the consumer’s leisure dollars.

When we offered marketing solutions to our clients in the ski industry, we closely examined what was being done at Killington, Vail, Stowe, Sun Valley, Park City, Aspen, Vail, Jackson Hole and others, including the big resorts in Canada and Europe. The same thing has happened with our clients in the amusement park and attractions industry, where everyone has visited Disney World and has come back with higher expectations. The same thing happened as well with our campground clients, where every camper has at one time or another stayed at a five-star resort. In every instance, the idea is not to present your business as something that it isn’t, but to present the unique advantages that your business offers that allow it to remain relevant in the overall scheme of evolving consumer expectations. You need to closely examine – and visit – the leaders within your industry, as well as industries that compete for the same consumer dollars. Then come back and see how you can apply the lessons learned to make your business hold greater appeal to both your existing clientele and an expanding base of prospects. In almost every instance, the issue is not size but the quality and level of services that you are able to provide. You know your clientele better than anyone else, so you should know exactly which services are the ones that they will most highly value and appreciate. Offer them those, with a smile and a personal touch!

I have explained in the past how to correct your business location on Google Maps; however, what do you do about getting your location corrected (or even listed!) on the GPS software that comes with many new motor vehicles or as after-market add-ons? Contact Map Reporter from NAVTEQ. This service allows you to easily take control of how your business is represented to the countless number of travelers who may be relying upon accurate guidance in finding their way to your door. NAVTEQ’s Map Reporter allows you to tell the company, the leading supplier of data to the GPS consumer products industry, where an update to a map may be necessary. Simply login, enter your address, zoom-in to the map interface, then report any of the following:
• Missing addresses or wrong locations
• Missing roads or incorrect road names
• Missing, incorrect, or defunct points of interest
• Traffic restrictions that should be added, corrected, or removed
Remember, it is ultimately up to YOU to take control of your business and to maximize every new tool that will help your business to prosper. This is one of those tools.

I am frequently asked to share my thoughts about banner advertising. Either the owners of a business would like to sell banner ad space as a source of revenue-generation on their websites, or business owners want to get their share of the “enormous” volume of traffic that will be generated by placing their own banner ads on high profile sites. These business owners have been sold a bill of goods about the fortunes waiting to be made through banner advertising, the Internet’s modern-day equivalent of the old story of the streets being paved with gold. Don’t fall for it.

If you are contemplating the placement of banner ads on another site, keep in mind that the people who are most likely to profit from your expenditures will be the people who will take your money to produce the ads or the hucksters selling the banner space with unsubstantiated promises of page views and impressions. If you are contemplating the addition of banner advertising to your own site, as a means of revenue generation, consider the costs of cluttering your site, with the result that both your website’s primary content and your business itself begin to hemorrhage credibility. It is a fact that websites with banner advertising have a lower trust factor in the eyes of consumers, with a corresponding decrease in perception as a source of either information or product reliability. The problem is that very few people are willing to admit to this “dirty little secret”.

As Marko Saric recently posted in his blog, “traditional banner ads take away from the user experience. They distract users and because of that users tend to ignore ads.” He goes on to reference the proven phenomenon called “Banner Blindness”. This term was coined by Dr. Jakob Nielsen back in August of 2007. For those who may be unfamiliar with Jakob Nielsen (and why his research is so highly creditable), he has been called “the guru of Web page usability” by The New York Times, “the world’s leading expert on Web usability” by U.S. News & World Report, “one of the top 10 minds in small business” by Fortune Small Business, and “one of the world’s foremost experts in Web usability” by Business Week.

In his study of banner advertising that first coined the term “Banner Blindness”, Dr. Nielsen summarizes that users rarely look at website display ads, and that the most common methods of increasing the effectiveness of banner advertising is to engage in deceptive practices to trick users into clicking, for example by incorporating fake “OK” or “Cancel” buttons into the ads. His earlier studies have shown that such online ads are either “very negatively” or “negatively” perceived by 94% of Web users, just 1 percentage point behind universally hated pop-up ads. His studies further concluded that, when users dislike online advertising, they “transfer their dislike to the advertisers behind the ad and to the website that exposed them to it.”

Getting back to Banner Blindness, Dr. Nielsen conducted extensive eyetracking studies that have conclusively proven that users “almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement.” In a 2003 survey conducted by PlanetFeedback, only 8% of U.S. consumers responded that they trusted banner ads (right behind infomercials, but ahead of door-to-door salesmen, spam, and pop-up ads) and 53% responded that they were annoyed by banner ads.

Substantiating this research, a study published in BusinessWeek in November of 2007, titled “So Many Ads, So Few Clicks”, reports that “the truth about online ads is that precious few people actually click on them. And the percentage of people who respond to common banner ads … is shrinking steadily”, with the average click-through rate having fallen to 0.2% in March of 2007 after several years of decline. The results of this study have been substantiated elsewhere in other independent research. Consider this if you are an advertiser, or contemplate joining the pack, since most advertisers pay based upon the number of impressions rather than clicks. It doesn’t take a mathematician to conclude that these ads do not represent a very sound investment.

Finally, if you are thinking about adding banner advertising to your own website as a source of revenue generation, consider the professional advice of Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, who suggests that you “crunch the numbers” before jumping onto the bandwagon. Based upon a combination of monthly page views and the cost per thousand impressions that you might be able to charge for your banner advertising space, your site will have to be generating an enormous amount of traffic (in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of page views per month) before your site would begin to generate any sizeable amount of income from the sale of banner advertising space.

Consider the cost of compromising your online integrity through the use of advertising that users both ignore and find annoying. Whether you are thinking about selling banner ads or buying banner ads, there are simply far more effective ways of growing your business online.

Additional references:
http://gigaom.com/2008/10/14/what-if-you-ran-an-ad-and-nobody-saw-it/
http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=banner+ads

The following comments were my contribution posted earlier today as part of the discussion “What do you think are the most important marketing messages for outdoor recreation and travel for 2009?” on the LinkedIn Outdoor Recreation and Travel Industry Marketing Network group.

I think that a viable campaign might follow the concept of “Slow Down and Get Off the Interstate”. I’m not referring to “Easy Off / Easy On” interchanges, toll booths, or the McDonald’s / Exxon rest areas. When times get tough, we tend to search for nostalgia. For different generations, this has different meanings and relates to different historical times. In every instance, that nostalgia involves a time when the pace of life was far slower, with a great deal of enjoyment gained from simple things. With every news cycle reporting more job losses and criminal behavior from the Bernie Madoffs of society, people want to slow down and get off of this wild ride.

With belt-tightening an economic necessity along with that search for nostalgia, I suspect that families will be doing more together. Grandparents and grandchildren will travel together, siblings will revisit their childhoods through family reunions, and the providers of outdoor recreational services are positioned to provide the venues and amenities to make it all possible.

We do not know what the future has in store, other than change itself, in either the short or long term. Gasoline might be $2.00.9 per gallon or it might be $450.9 per gallon … and the cost of jet fuel might put the cost of air travel out of reach for the average American (if it isn’t already). Regardless of where the ride takes us, Americans will still spend leisure time together. It is the responsibility of the outdoor recreation and travel industry to persuade people to spend that vacation time “close to home” rather than “at home”.

With the outstanding value that family campgrounds, in particular, have to offer, a simple marketing messages sums it all up: “Slow Down and Get Off the Interstate” … and rediscover America, your family, and yourself in the process.

I was recently part of a discussion in LinkedIn’s Guerrilla Marketing Tips for Small Businesses group to which I belong. The question involved how to compete in a David vs Goliath scenario where a large national chain opens a location in your local service area. In this instance, the discussion was started by the owner of a small computer repair company (let’s call it “HKR Computer Repair”) who had a big computer repair franchise (let’s call them “Nerds R Us”) open in his backyard. He expected to prevail in the long run but was afraid of the short-term impact upon his business. He wanted to know how to compensate for such a large presence and not lose cash flow. The following was my response:

You are likely to experience some short-term loss as a result of the money that they will spend to launch their new location. In the long run, nothing is easier than competing against Goliaths. You’ve already identified some of the weaknesses in the instance of “Nerds R Us”. In general, you should have a major competitive advantage against a big outfit with high overhead and a “one size fits all” business concept. You know your market. Do your customers want to communicate directly with the knowledgeable owner of a business or some kid who’s just finished 48 hours of training the week after he quit his job at Starbucks?

The vast majority of my company’s clients are successfully competing against the Wal-Marts of their industries. Sometimes it requires the redefinition of a business in order to better capitalize upon the Goliath’s weaknesses or market segments where the Goliath cannot possible compete. Although not one of my clients, I like to relate the success story of a family hardware store that has found its niche while most similar businesses simply roll over and die as soon as a Home Depot or Lowes rolls into town. South Fork Hardware has been in business in South Fork, Pennsylvania for 60 years, and they have transformed themselves into the tire chain specialists of North America. Home Depot or Wal-Mart can’t afford to sell tire chains. They couldn’t possibly maintain the inventory of all of the necessary variations and sizes in their thousands of retail locations. South Fork Hardware, on the other hand, through one centralized location, can supply any set of tire chains imaginable and ship the same day. Admittedly, there is not an enormous market for tire chains these days; however, when you own the market, the lion’s share of a specialized market can be extremely profitable. Do a Google search for “tire chains”, and you will see that www.tirechain.com (South Fork Hardware’s URL and new business persona) comes up at #1. Alternately, do a “type-in” of www.tirechain.com or www.tirechains.com , and you will see how they have come to “own” their market.

As a side note, I have purchased three sets of tire chains from South Fork Hardware over the last 10 years. Do you see how I am unintentionally promoting their business? Your customers will do the same. Particularly when people are dissatisfied with a product or service, they spread the word. It should be easy for you to weather what is certain to be a fast-moving storm. Your business should continue to thrive long after Nerds R Us has moved out of town (perhaps because they couldn’t face your competition).

Did you ever think that maybe they hadn’t performed the proper market research before opening their new location? They could be in for a big surprise when they discover that they have to try to compete against a well-established competitor, HKR Computer Repair!