With the maturity of the internet and satellite radio, you now have more media options than ever to advertise your message. This actually makes it harder to reach your audience, not easier.
Television Advertising: Back in the day, you had five local television networks to advertise on. Now you have over 300 channel choices on digital cable and satellite. These options make marketers salivate because you can reach a specific audience with unique interests like gardening, sports, shopping and more. However, with so many choices, you never know when and where your audience is going to be. This makes television a harder reach unless you pay the larger dollars for prime time, sports or news.
Radio advertising will eventually get to be as difficult as television to reach your audience. You have just as many radio station choices if you have satellite service. As more competition comes into the market, watch as the prices of satellite radio become more competitive over the next few years. For now, local radio is still a very affordable, and effective, way to reach your audience with drive time, the lunch hour, and popular talk shows yielding the highest return on your investment.
Mail advertising has frustrated businesses with the number of responses continuing to decline. With low-dollar mail options like Val-Pak, Money Mailer and Value Mail, more businesses are looking at cost per piece and going for quantity over quality. In contrast, the art of "direct mail" challenges this cost per piece thinking. Direct Marketing is the right message to the right audience and, when done right, is a lower mail quantity with higher results. So even though there are more mail options than ever before, using direct marketing (with solo mail pieces, targeting, testing, and re-testing) is a great road to travel to find valuable results.
Directory advertising: Yellow Pages, Yellow Book, Local Directories, Google, Yahoo, and hundreds of other on-line directory sources have diminished the effectiveness of any one directory. Statistics are showing Google and Yahoo are producing higher results for consumers looking for products and services than local directory sources (print or on-line). This environment is changing daily and can be a never-ending chase that results in thousands of wasted dollars trying to gain customers through these printing and on-line resources.
Magazines, website ads & banners, home shows and just about every marketing and sales opportunity available have similar challenges to getting results these days. So just because I left something out, does not mean it's the way to go.
But there's good news! Despite the fact that what used to be reliable media is now watered down, Radio, TV, and Direct Mail can all still produce desired results for your business. The challenge is that you have to put more time and effort into everything you do. This is why hiring a professional with marketing experience can save you the frustration, time and money. Yes, you may pay more up front to execute projects, but the results usually pay for themselves, especially when compared to fumbling through unchartered territory on your own.
Cowtown Marketing Strategies specializes in knowing the characteristics of local advertising choices for your business. Whether you are reaching existing customers or prospecting new ones, schedule a consultation today and save money while increasing results. 
Bad marketing is a crime! And those who are commissioned to sell you non-responsive media, should be locked away for good. By reading this e-letter, I want you to get more results for your hard earned money. Most of my marketing tips are for small to mid-size businesses in which the primary goals are to generate leads for sales, increase market share and/or brand awareness. I wish you the best in all your local marketing efforts!
Consulting with different businesses in different industries, I see one common mistake that many business owners make. They are too focused on prospecting for new business before they have decided how they will retain the customers they have. Who cares if your marketing picks up 100 new customers if you lost 100 existing customers by not meeting their needs?