In the previous segment we noted how quickly the local business marketing landscape has changed in the last few years.

Traditional media have become splintered. Newspapers are losing readers and advertisers. Direct mail has become ineffective because of technology changes. Advertising in local magazines is over-priced because of high production costs and vigorous competition from the web.

And most important, the Yellow Pages are no longer the dominant force they once were because fewer and fewer people actually use them for a whole variety of reasons.

Environmental Concerns

So far we haven’t even mentioned the environmental concerns about traditional print-based advertising. Don’t get me wrong. I was involved in the print advertising and related businesses for more than 20 years, and I’m not suggesting all print advertising should be banned because of environmental concerns.

But let’s get real.

Every week we get a big bag of junk mail flyers thrown in our driveway. My wife dutifully retrieves the local newspaper that comes wrapped up in the junk fliers. But I would just as soon chuck the whole mess just out of principal.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one. More and more people are reacting negatively to such ridiculous waste.

Just think of the millions and millions of big yellow books spread across the country. How many people do you think already refuse to use these things because of their environmental impact? Millions I would think. And millions more in the
very near future. Assuming the Yellow Pages even survive that long.

Are traditional media effective?

All of this misses the main reason advertisers have ALWAYS had serious misgivings towards traditional advertising. There is usually no way to monitor its effectiveness!

In fact, many traditional media usually discourage effectiveness monitoring. The reason is pretty simple. They know how ineffective most of their products actually are.

Is web marketing effective?

Unfortunately the same can be said for many web marketing and advertising products.

I am sure you been bombarded with advertising “systems” that promise to put your ads on thousands of websites. The pitch sounds convincing until you realize that nobody ever looks at these ads because nobody ever goes to the websites where the ads are placed.

Web marketing scams like that are a dime a dozen. There are literally thousands of them.

But the difference with web marketing scams is that you can immediately see how ineffective they are. There are hundreds of simple, inexpensive ways of monitoring your website traffic (Google Analytics, for example), and they tell you exactly how much traffic you are getting, and where it is coming from.

Results-oriented Web Marketing – GCC System

An effective web marketing system must be results-oriented. Above all that means it will produce quantifiable results. The best system for giving you those results is what we call a GCC System. We’ll introduce it in the next segment.

In the next segment…
The GCC concept – Gather-Capture-Convert.
Web marketing that gets results you can see

—————————————————-

Join the Linknet Affiliate Program for updates and new
products targeting Local Business…

http://www.linknet-promotions.com/affiliates

—————————————————–

Reprinted from The Next Web Marketing Gold Mine – a multi-part eCourse about effectively using (and selling) web marketing for local business. You can sign up here.