Online vs Traditional Ads
Online advertising is better than traditional advertising in speed, flexibility, targetability, costs, audience size, and analysis.
Let’s compare two different scenarios.
Scenario 1 – Traditional Newspaper Ad
First you need to get in contact with the paper and see what kind of spot you can get and for how long. Since there is a human involved with this process it usually takes a day or two to even find out where you can have your ad and how long it can run. Once you find out ad locations and length of ad run you submit your ad. This has to go through the approval department which can take another day or so.
Want to target a specific type of person who reads the newspaper? You can’t. The only targetability you get is picking that newspaper.
You run the ad an the phone is not ringing. You are literally relying on someone reading your ad and typing in the URL or calling the phone number presented. How many people have see the ad? What is your cost per view? You don’t know because there are no metrics.
If you determine the ad isn’t working, it doesn’t matter if you want to stop the ad. You already bought the spot.
Scenario 2 – Online Ad
You start creating your ad campaign and the rules are clear and upfront. You submit your ad and it gets approved in hours.
You are not sure if this ad will work well so you set a $100/day budget to test it out. It flops. You make three more ads and run them in parallel. One is a clear winner based on the live metrics you are able to analyze. You blast your most effective ad and obtain patients at great value.
