I was recently listening to a report on the radio that was explaining the drop in television audience numbers and the corresponding drop in revenue from advertising sales. As it turns out, television isn’t the only traditional adverting medium that has been losing steam. Print advertising has been reported to be down as much as 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 alone. Many would argue that its is a sign of our struggling economy and that spending is down in many areas. While there is probably some truth to this, the state of the economy is only a part of the cause. The major influence in the decline of traditional advertising is the internet.
More of the population is switching to the world wide web for many of the activities they used to partake in elsewhere. Reading the newspaper with your morning coffee is now more commonly done online. Watching television programming and renting movies, yep online too. It should really come as no surprise that as the numbers erode from these markets so does the value of advertising within them. As these trends continue, more and more advertising resources are being used in various online marketing campaigns.
While there are many options that can offer a solid return on one’s advertising dollar, I strongly feel that organic search engine optimization is the best place to start. Having a website that is properly optimized for best results in the search engines rankings benefits your business directly. Receiving more visits from targeted traffic is an obvious step in the right direction. However, if you are making use of other internet advertising methods you will generally find that a pre existing SEO effort will augment the effectiveness of those methods as well.