Advertising is in the middle of a huge evolution/revolution. Traditional advertising expenditures are taking a hit as marketers move to digital, this according to an article on eMarketer.com:
According to a February report from the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), digital marketers worldwide are investing a greater portion of their total marketing budget online this year, which is not surprising given their familiarity with the medium. One third expect to invest 60% or more of their ad budget digitally.
According to the same article, here’s how the money is moving,
The shift to earned/owned media is smart. The ramifications are huge for you and your local dealers.
The first and best thing you can do now is to help your retailers build landing pages that are loaded with great brand content and promotions and enhanced with local dealer input. Think of an online newspaper ad builder that builds and hosts a digital landing page instead of a newspaper ad (or better yet, do both in one tool).
Now you have a system where you can connect your local retailers to your earned and owned digital channels. And, because the system hosts the landing pages, you can track, measure and improve every page every second of every day.
The good news is that connecting your dealers to your earned/owned digital media is free of publication costs.
The hidden challenge is that the power of your co-op rules and dollars doesn’t work with free media. More on that later.