Every year at this time we like to look back to see what the major changes were in local advertising techniques during the past year and from there project what will happen in the coming year. It’s really easy this year to see that mobile will be an important part of what we do in 2011 and beyond.
This chart is an over simplification of the big picture of how brand, creative and retailer input come together in an online ad builder to deliver outputs for local advertising.
Since our first effort in 1997, we’ve seen the slow but steady need to add more digital outputs to what we do. Simply because consumers spend more time online now than they spend with traditional media.
So, instead of just merging brand content with dealer information to make a newspaper ad, why not also spin a landing page for a Google local adword campaign or a dealer landing page for the dealer locator? Same content just a different output. And, with online content there is either a greatly reduced or nonexistent publishing cost that makes it even more attractive.
Interestingly too, we’re seeing that an ad builder works best if it does both, that is, traditional and digital outputs. If it only does traditional we’re missing out on 70% of consumers who research online before making a durable goods purchase. If we only do digital output we neglect what is still a substantial part of a dealer’s advertising spend and risk making the dealer work to hard to solve his everyday advertising needs. A dealer needs one online tool to do it all.
In 2011, doing it all, will include building dealer mobile pages or mobile sites or e-promo pages for mobile, simply because of the explosive growth in smartphones and therefore the unbelievable benefit of knowing exactly where a consumer is standing as they search the Internet.
2011 is going to be a lot of fun.