During Your 2011 Marketing/Advertising Budget Planning - Remember: There’s a Great Future in Internet Marketing!

For many companies, it’s budget planning time. Departments scramble to gather the proof of their value to the company so they can get as many dollars as possible to support their initiatives and existence. For those Marketing and Advertising folks that are beginning this yearly ritual, I just want to say two words to you – just two words – are you listening?  Internet Marketing.

More and more companies are realizing that Internet marketing has great advantages over traditional marketing. One of the top advantages of online advertising is the lower cost per marketing impression compared to traditional advertising. (Thanks to J Buschlen on HubPages for the following numbers):

•  A 30-second television commercial on a highly-viewed, mid-week evening show that has an estimated 22.9 million viewers will cost $705,000. Because this program has such a high number of viewers the cost per impression is calculated at $0.031 per impression.
• A full-page, Sunday edition ad in the New York Times costs $145,278 and reaches 1.65 million people resulting in a $0.088 per impression.
• A 30-second ad on an adult hits radio station in Los Angeles (1.4 million listeners per week, or 4,167 listeners during any one 30 second period) costs $1,083 – a cost per impression of $0.26 which is more than print and TV advertising.

(All of the numbers used for the cost per marketing impression data, above, are definitely for the high-end advertisers; scale back the numbers that are more in line with your expenditures and you’ll get an idea of the range of costs per marketing impression you can expect with a smaller budget.)

But, consider this:

• A monthly Search Engine Optimization investment of $2,750 resulting in 670,000 targeted, search engine impressions comes out to only $0.004 per impression.

Traditional marketing and advertising uses “old media” that is losing its oomph while making line items appear as though they are screaming “CUT ME! I’M CLEARLY AN OVER-PRICED, UNDER-PERFORMING, OUT-DATED EXPENSE THAT IS NOT EVEN IN ALIGNMENT WITH THE ‘DOING MORE WITH LESS’ PHILOSOPHY THAT THE EXECUTIVES OF THIS COMPANY HAVE SO STRONGLY EMBRACED!”

Is there still a place for traditional marketing and advertising? Of course there is. One long-standing marketing tenet is that a marketing mix = good marketing. (I have to say this to be fair and somewhat realistic. But, I truly believe that an Internet marketing mix = great marketing. Funny though, when you think about it, the term “marketing mix” was coined waaaay back in 1953…hmmm. Could that term really continue to be relevant 55+ years later?!). So sorry – I got side-tracked.

However, for your 2011 budget, look at the traditional marketing mix you’ve used for years and find those expenses that can be replaced by more cost-effective, results-oriented, forward-thinking Internet Marketing strategies.