Logix Thoughts

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The Big Shift From Traditional to Digital Advertising

About three-quarters of enterprise decision makers have been shifting their budgets from traditional advertising to digital in the last year. In fact, about one-third of the marketing executives said they shifted more than half of their budget from traditional to digital.

According to a March 2012 report from DataXu, these numbers will continue next year as well, with 4 out of 5 who are shifting to digital saying that they will continue to do so for the next year.

The main reasons for the big switch is increased metastability. With a lot of traditional media, especially print, you can’t choose who sees your ads and how they see them. With digital advertising, you can choose how many people you target, what actions you are targeting them through, and you can interact with them directly after they take an action. With print media, you have to hope they respond, but you have no way of knowing if they do.

Are you doing any sort of digital advertising such as search engine marketing, retargeting or banner ads? If not, you need to get started. Internet marketing is here to stay, and can give you the best bang for your buck, while at the same time giving you more control over your campaigns than you ever thought possible.

Contact us for a free consultation.


Paid Search Impressions and Clicks Increasing, Cost Decreasing

Paid search spending grew 30.3% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2012, representing the highest growth rate since the last quarter of 2010 (35%).

These numbers come from IgnitonOne, who tracked Internet marketing usage during this time period.

Mobile and tablet paid search also increased, with spending up 221.1% year-over-year, and impressions up 119.9%.

Despite the increased budget spending, cost-per-click didn’t increase, rising just 0.9% year-over-year. Clicks rose 32.5% and click-through rates were up 25.3%.

All these numbers mean good things for small businesses trying to use search marketing. Clicks and click-through rates are rising, and the cost per click isn’t changing at all. This means that businesses are getting more impression and clicks than ever before for the same price.

If you’re interested in getting started with search engine marketing, contact us today. We target and fine-tune all of our campaigns, giving you the best return possible on all your marketing efforts.


Why You Should Do Display Advertising

Targeted display advertising is one of the best ways to market to the largest possible audience for your target demographic.

Display advertising gives you the ability to market to your potential customers no matter where they are in the sales funnel. It can help build awareness as well as build trust and drive purchases.

One of the best things about display advertising is how measurable it is. You can measure how many people have clicked on the ads, and you can also measure how much of a lift you got from your other advertising efforts, such as website traffic, branded search queries, email marketing conversions, etc.

Display advertising can bring significant lift to all your other advertising efforts. In a report from Online Marketing Connect, targeted display advertising can bring a 30% increase in conversion rates from online forms. Additionally, comScore said that display increased lift to an advertiser’s website by 46%.

At AdsUpNow, we offer a variety of display advertising options to help maximize the impressions from every dollar you spend. We continually adjust and optimize your campaign to get the best results. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation.


Marketing Executives Are Continuing to Shift into Digital Marketing

In new research from eMarketer, CMOs predicted that their ad budgets would rise 8.1%. This shows renewed confidence in the economy, and shows a general upward trend since the end of the recession in 2009.

Out of that extra 8.1% of marketing budget, most of it will be spent on digital marketing. In fact, digital marketing spend is expected to increase by 12.8% over the next year. This is the highest change out of all marketing channels, beating traditional ad spending, brand-building, and customer relationship management.

Traditional media spending is expected to drop 0.8% over the same period. This reflects the larger trend of traditional ad spend decreasing, while digital ad spend is increasing.

eMarketer also estimates that digital advertising spending will rise 23.3% this year, while traditional budgets other than TV are going to remain steady.

Now is a great time for small businesses to market themselves online. Digital marketing and advertising channels offer access to a large audience, but offer things traditional marketing channels can’t offer such as targeting and better analytics data.

If you have any questions about digital adverting or marketing, contact us today for a free consultation.


Multitasking Consumers Bring New Challenges

Consumers are using more media than ever before, but their attention is more divided than ever before as well. In a new report from eMarketer, consumers are spending more than 11 hours with media on a daily basis.

Coming in first is TV and video, with 4:34 spent watching at least some kind of video. That’s a huge number, and shows that even in today’s world, traditional TV spend shouldn’t be counted out.

Even more telling than TV is that Internet came in at 2:47 per day. That’s an amazing statistic for a technology that has only been around for a few years. That’s also good news for digital marketing, because Internet usage has been increasing and shows no sign of slowing down.

The flipside to this increased time spent consuming content means that more of that time is spent multitasking through different forms of media, so there’s less dedicated time spent interacting with one form of media.

This is especially apparent with people watching TV. More than 16% of respondents said they visit the websites of companies’ ads they see, and 19% of tablet and smartphone users said they searched for information on commercials they see as well. This shows the importance of having an integrated marketing campaign, because people don’t just watch TV or go online anymore, they do them all at once.

An easy way to integrate your campaigns is Retargeting. By referencing a special or discount in your radio and TV ads for online shoppers, you can drive more traffic to your website. Then, after people visit your website, you can target them with display advertising, increasing the chance of them returning and converting.

Contact us today to find out how to reach more Internet users with Retargeting.


Social Display Spending To Increase in 2012

More and more people are going on social networks. In fact, Facebook wins one in every five page views, and accounts for nine percent of all visits online.

Those are huge numbers, and the steadily increasing amount of people on Facebook, means more advertising dollars will be spent on the social-networking site in 2012.

According to eMarketer, 59% of marketers are planning on increasing social media advertising in 2012, compared to 31% planning on increasing on ad networks and exchanges.

eMarketer also estimates that US online display advertising will grow an astonishing 24.1% this year to $15.4 billion.

This is good news for small businesses everywhere. Social network advertising and display targeting can be narrowed down to pinpoint only those people who might be interested in your product or service.

The Internet gives you the ability to appear larger than you are, and give you advertising scale you might otherwise not be able to afford.

Contact us today and we can help get you on the path to marketing success.


Digital and Mobile Ad Budgets Rising

In a recent survey from research company Warc, digital and mobile ad budgets are growing, while TV, radio and press budgets are shrinking.

The budget sentiments are based on a system of 0-100, where anything over 50 is generally improving, and below 50 is generally declining.

Digital and mobile received scores of 78.9 and 71.2, respectively. TV received a score of 48.8, Radio a score of 42.1 and Press a score of 36.1.

Now is a great time to be spending more on digital and mobile. More and more people are accessing the Internet from desktops and mobile devices, and those numbers are only going to grow.

Contact us today if you want to get your digital advertising efforts of the ground.


Local Digital Ad Spend to Reach $38.5B by 2016

In a new report from research firm BIA/Kelsey, it projected that local online and mobile advertising will grow at an annual rate of 12.7%.

These numbers show substantial lift compared with the $21.2B spent in 2011, but still pale in comparison to traditional advertising spend.

Traditional Spend was $111.5B in 2011, but is only projected to grow to $112.7B. Those are essentially flat numbers, meaning not much will change from no until 2016. In fact, traditional ad spend will decrease to account for about 75% of overall ad budgets, dropping almost 10% from the 84% it’s at now.

This research shows that more and more small businesses are investing into digital advertising, but the real question is: are you?

If you haven’t evaluated your online strategy recently, you need to. Digital advertising is not going away, in fact, it’s only getting bigger.

Check out some of our offerings for digital marketing. We do all sorts of search and display advertising. We also do email marketing, mobile websites and more.


Mobile, Mobile and More Mobile

We’ve preached over and over how mobile is changing the digital marketing and advertising business. We’ve seen it with our own clients, and marketers across the U.S. are increasing their mobile budgets as well.

The latest report comes from Marin, a search-management software company. They predict that mobile will be bigger than desktop soon, and that marketers need to raise budgets accordingly.

One prediction is that at the current run-rates, mobile devices will account for 25% of all paid search clicks on Google by December 2012. Additionally, the share of ad spend will be 23%. Those are additions of 103% and 164%, respectively.

One of the driving factors behind all of this growth in mobile is the insanely fast consumer adoption of smartphones and tablets. In 2011 alone, Apple sold more iOS devices than the total number of Macs ever sold in the last 28 years.

Another reason for adding mobile into your business’ marketing strategy is that smartphones have higher click-through rate, and a lower cost-per-click than both desktop and tablets. Smartphone users click on ads 4.12% of the time compared with 2.39% for desktops and 3.12% for tablets. Additionally, the cost per click is only $.53 for smartphones, compared with $.83 and $.63 for desktops and tablets, respectively.

So have you decided that you need mobile yet? Well if you haven’t yet, I’ll do my best to convince you with some more data about mobile over the next few days.


Search Engine Use Continues to Grow

More than half of adult search engine users make searches at least once a day. That represents a 54% increase from 35% in 2004. This represents a huge increase in the number of people that use search engines to find information.

These numbers come from a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Search engine use has never been higher. Daily use is highest among 18-29 and 30-49 year-olds (60%), college graduates (70%), and people with household incomes of more than $75k (68%).


Search engines are also seen as reliable sources of information, while almost three-quarters of users say that most of the information they find is accurate and trustworthy.

So what does all this mean for small business marketing? Well, it means that if you aren’t in the search results, you need to be. Search engines are being used more frequently than ever to find information, and users see them as a reliable and trustworthy way to find what they’re looking for.

One way to get in the top of the search results is with search targeting. Also known as paid search, search targeting gets your ads into the top of the search results page, resulting in increased visibility and clicks.

Another way to show up in search results is to optimize your Google Places page. Create a unique Google Places page that provides information for people to find your business.

Another way to get better results in the local search rankings is to use a business directory service to get more citations of your business. A service such as Local AdsUpNow gets your business listed in almost 150 directories, giving your business increased presence and authority in Google’s eyes.

It’s not too late to get in the search results. Contact us today to get started with search targeting or Google Places Optimization.