The answer to this is actually very simple. Times have changed.  Consider this.  How many people do you know that have to walk across the room and manually change their television channels?  Collectively, we couldn’t think of one person ourselves. We once lived in a society where people got out of their cars and raised their garage doors.  Today, garage door openers are for the most part “standard equipment” in most homes.  People have changed and lifestyles have changed as well.  However, with these changes, what new and improved methods of advertising have we seen in recent years?  The answer to that is: really nothing until now.  You still have for the most part the exact same methods used since the 70’s.  Newspaper, radio, and television advertising are probably still the most commonly used today.

However, these methods are no longer producing the results they once did for 2 simple reasons. 

1) They haven’t changed much at all, and

2) people’s lifestyles have changed a great deal.  This is why we need to get creative with our advertising strategies.

What about it?  It just doesn’t work like it used to.  Think about it. Who has the time to sit down and read an entire newspaper anymore?  There is just way too much to do. Between work, home, school, and kids, there just aren’t enough hours in a day anymore. People’s lives are busier now than ever before.  Most people merely scan the newspaper attempting to stay informed on what’s going on today.  Yet, a growing number of people find out what’s going on via the World Wide Web.  Local and national news bits are emailed to them or pop up in a menu when they log on. Newspapers know this and they even cater to it by posting their news for free on the web.  For this reason, subscriptions are overwhelmingly down across the US. People spend more and more time on their computers and they get most of their news that way.  They don’t have to worry about it being delivered completely soaked on a raining day.  They don’t have to worry about it being all rolled up in a little roll making it next to impossible to un roll and read.  They don’t have to run out and get it from their driveway or tube on their mailbox. And last but certainly not least, they don’t have to worry about the neighbor’s dog running off with it.  Newspapers around the country are closing down or downsizing to one or two days a week.  The bottom line….. newspaper advertising used to work great, but, times have changed and the results have too.

Again, this answer is simple when you sit down and think about it.  Back in the 70’s there came into existence a new technology that allowed people to, for the first time ever, conveniently take their music with them to work or in their car.  8 track tapes were the “wave of the future”.  People had them in the consoles of their cars and carried 8 track tape players with them wherever they wanted.  That was soon replaced with cassette tapes, then compact disks, and now today, mp3 players. Automobiles are equipped with cd shufflers that can hold several cd’s at one time. People can listen to what they want, when they want, and without the constant interruption of commercials.  There is even commercial free programming available now for a nominal monthly fee and it is available anywhere in the US for the most part.  For the unfortunate people that don’t have any of these toys and have to listen to the old car radio, many will tell us that they have their favorite channels programmed on the pre-sets and they flip from one station to the next. All of this is so that any radio listener anywhere can enjoy commercial free programming one way or another. Considering all of this, is there any wonder why radio advertising doesn’t work like it used to?

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In our opinion, television advertising is not the best solution for the average small business.  It too has changed in many ways just as newspaper and radio.  Television has probably seen the biggest change of all when it comes to the changing of peoples lifestyles.  Consider this.  Most of us remember a day when we could only receive 3, maybe 4, and on a great day if we stood just right by the TV possibly 5 channels.  Today there are literally hundreds of channels available.  Think of it as a roulette table.  When we only had 3 or 4 channels, the odds were much greater that the viewers in your local market would see your advertisement.  After all, it would be like playing on a roulette table that only had 3 or 4 numbers.  Today, that same roulette table has 300 to 400 numbers.  With that in mind, where do you place your bets?  The odds are even a bit worse when you add in the fact that many of those channels are commercial free programming.  With only a few exceptions, people, for the most part, aren’t interested in watching commercials.  The biggest exception would be the commercials during the Super Bowl.  If the game wasn’t any good, you could always bank on watching very entertaining commercials.  In fact, more people talked about the commercials than they did the game.  That was until 2003.  People everywhere agreed that the commercials in 2003 didn’t live up to their usual standards by any means.  In fact, most people were very disappointed.  It is our personal belief that the advertisers can no longer justify the expense.  Another point to consider is just because people are watching “TV” doesn’t mean that they are watching network programming.  Back in the 70’s, most people used their VCR to only record television programs that they missed.  You can bet that with this practice, they didn’t watch the commercials at all.  They just pressed the “FF” button.  Today, with video stores on every corner and with DVD’s available in convenient stores, watching commercial free television isn’t so difficult even for the people that don’t have the commercial free paid programming.  VCRs are today a common household item and DVD players are gaining popularity quickly right behind them. Our bottom line opinion is this.  Unless you have a very large some of money to invest, and can afford to lose that money in an effort to experiment with television advertising, there are much better ways for you to build affordable traffic.