Starting Out

Pay peanuts... and waddya get? Disclaimer

(This article was first written in 1997.... and strangely enough, the principles apply even more today)

It's an old saying, currently undergoing a resurgence in relation to what you can get from a relatively new advertising medium.

Any SME (small to medium enterprise) has a virtual plethora of options to spend their advertising dollar on.

There's green, pink, yellow, white and a dozen other types of big colour pages to choose from. And local, regional, metropolitan, and national papers, along with radio, TV, letterbox drops... For example, many SME's place ads in local papers, week after week, often without thinking of the total yearly spend.

Do some sums and work out how much it is to reach (at least) fifty thousand people - all year - using any of the traditional mechanisms.

Your Internet "advertisement" to these people can cost you as little as $500 p.a. for 24hr-a-day advertising. Realistically, most SME's need to allow from $500 to $1500 p.a. for a useful advertisement. Internet advertising can be a very cost effective choice for any SME, compared to the traditional forms of advertising, except for one potential problem I'd like to make you aware of which will determine the success or otherwise of your investment...

There are a large number of so-called "experts" in the emerging Internet field, many of them part-time with little business acumen. Sure, they can "do" a collection of web "pages" for you for peanuts, but remember what you'll get...

And the monkey, once he's eaten your peanuts, goes off to play in the trees...

But the Internet is a dynamic advertising medium. It's not something you "place an ad" on and leave it for twelve months. Your electronic ads must be "tweaked" continually and promoted aggressively to ensure their cost effectiveness.

When choosing who you get to look after your Internet presence, the monkeys can't give you proper marketing advice.

Get a full time, accredited, professional consultant to help. They don't work for peanuts... Just enough to put some butter and filling on the sandwich!