In many respects, setting up a company is the easy part of getting started in business. Finding customers is the real challenge for people in self-employment.
With the economy continuing to struggle, it is vital that companies market themselves effectively, making the most of their advertising budgets – however limited.Increasingly, as consumers shop online and use the internet for entertainment and public services, more businesses are focusing on this channel to raise brand awareness.
For those of use that started out in business in the 80s, the web has really changed things. In our day, advertising was a much more expensive business and the success of campaigns was far more difficult to gauge.
If your company had taken out an ad in the local newspaper, or paid for a TV or radio short, the only way of ascertaining the level of success was to look at sales and revenue.
And there was never any guarantee that the marketing campaign was directly responsible for the rise – or fall – in sales. In fact, a lot of assumptions had to be made.
These days, with the internet, business marketers can look at click-through rates, page impressions and a host of other analytics to monitor the success of advertising online.
Companies using digital channels to build their brands can tell much sooner whether their approaches are working, helping them to make the most of their limited funds.
And while computers may not be everyone’s forte in my generation, us business folk tend to know a good thing when we see one.
Posted by the Secret Businessman