How much of your 2012 promotional budget is allocated to online?

You may well know of small business marketing guru Carolyn Tate. Carolyn works hard to help smaller business operators grapple with that strange beast called marketing and make it work for them.

A few years ago now (2008 to be exact), she opined that small businesses should be spending at least one third of their promotional budget on online promotion techniques. 

Her point was that the Return On Investment was so high from the new media, and that it was then so critical in the overall promotional mix, that it deserved more budget than smaller businesses were throwing at it.

Four revolutionary years later…

But come 2012, the online landscape has changed considerably since those four short years ago.

Since 2008:

• Social networking has gone mainstream
• Smart phones have gained critical mass
• Online deals have exploded – seemingly out of nowhere
• Annual online sales revenues have nearly doubled
• Gerry Harvey couldn’t beat so has joined the online world

Pretty much the only thing that hasn’t changed about the online world is that Rupert Murdoch still hasn’t worked out how to make a quid out of it – unlike the rest of the media world he dominates.

So given these significant developments, the question has to be asked.

Is a one third allocation to online promotion enough these days?

Still horses for courses

That’s not an easy question to answer because what works for one small business can differ completely to what works for another.

For some, Social Networking will be an effective means of promoting day to day news, sales, deals and so on. For others it will be a complete waste of time.

Some will be tapping into the massive Return On Investment provided by email marketing, while others won’t have fired a single promotional email shot in anger.

Some will provide websites which are a major thrust of their promotional strategy, while others will grudgingly fork out a few dollars to shut up the kids constantly hassling them to get online.

Some will have experimented with their first online deals, while others will still be forking out for their diminishing Yellow Pages advertising returns.

You get the idea.

Traditional does not mean extinct

But before you cancel all your promotional spend on traditional media, be assured that just as online techniques can work very well for some, so can much of the old techniques.

TV, Radio and Press aren’t as dead as many would make out.  They are still very effective among certain markets and because the new media has cut into their revenues, are likely to be more affordable than ever.

But even if smaller business operators know they have to make the move online, they are often overwhelmed by a medium that is complex, constantly changing and supplied by an industry that is either expensive, fragmented or sometime just plain wrong.

Who you gonna call?

It’s fine it you can fork out the kind of dollars advertising agencies are accustomed to, but if not, there is not much between DIY and expensive digital agencies – something some of us are working hard to address.

Even the TAFEs and other educational institutions seem hellbent on turning you into a web guru instead of just giving you the ‘high level’ information you need to be able to plan and execute an online promotional strategy.

But don’t be disheartened.  Affordable professional help is out there.

So just do your research, check the provider’s track record and most importantly, measure their effectiveness in business growth or savings rather than how pretty or fast your website is.

In the right hands you will soon be gaining real sales, enquiries and productivity gains and spending less on increasingly ineffective traditional techniques.

In addition to being a leading eBusiness educator to the smaller business sector, Craig Reardon is the founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which was established to address the special website and web marketing needs of SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.  www.theeteam.com.au