After a long summer siesta, it’s time to get back down to Marketing, Mayhem and fighting for the better good of Mass Media. So let’s get right to it, shall we?
A recent article in Digital News Daily reports Small Businesses Boosting Digital Ad Spend, But Not Seeing Benefits.
The majority of the SMB’s responding cited their digital campaign ire in one of three ways:
- “I don’t know how to run them.”
- “I don’t think they are valuable.”
- “They are not relevant to my business.”
“The findings suggest that a lack of knowledge and/or sophistication is holding them back”, is how the report was summarized. Oh I see – the vast majority of the advertising customers on Google and Facebook, are morons (for in order to unlock the genie in the digital bottle, one must enlist the help of, say, Ripl Inc., a developer of marketing software and subscription services for small businesses…and publisher of the self-reported study).
OR, maybe they’re just getting ripped off!?
Google: Is dominated by Big Brands / Arbitrarily bans entire sectors from Search results / Self preferences, depriving local businesses of customers / Has an Ad market which is opaque and expensive / Steals content from small businesses / Enables the theft of brands and trademarks / Allows the proliferation of scam small business listings / Is too large to provide customer service / Kills alternatives to their platform.
Facebook: Forces businesses to pay to reach their own customers / Has an Ad market which is opaque and plagued by bots / Changes their algorithm on a whim / Keeps the data gathered from small businesses’ customers / Allows counterfeiting in their Marketplace / Inadvertently catches legitimate advertising when purging the false / Kills alternatives to their platform.
You can read more about the harm Google (monopoly on search) and Facebook (monopoly on display) do to Small Businesses in the American Economic Liberties Project here.
One other thing – The average monthly spend of the 800 businesses surveyed was $534 a month. You read that right. It’s not a typo. They would be better off paying a college kid home for the summer to run around town with a sign and ring a bell then flush $534 down the Facebook rabbit hole. The greatest trick Facebook ever pulled was convincing the meekest of marketers that they can compete with the big boys for pennies on the dollar. Attention SMB’s – those penny’s add up for FB, not you. Between 2016 and 2019, FB saw a 2900% increase in SMB’s advertising in their fun house; from 3 million to 90 million. A spot on Sunday Night Football this season will cost in excess of $785,000 for :30 (on TV). Maybe there’s a correlation between, I don’t know, ad cost and ad effectiveness? And why does this need to be “sophisticated” anyway? This ain’t rocket science people. It’s this simple…….Ready?
Scrape together every penny you have and scream as loud as possible about yourself from atop the highest mountain. That advice will cost you $534 dollars. Checks can be made payable to the Marketing Blog Dr ad lab. Thank you.
