To paraphrase, It's not the medium, it's the message. One of the local high end shops has an online advertising system that seems to follow me around the internet and put up clickable ads everywhere I go. I rarely click them because the five or six words they get before I'm not looking anymore seldom motivate me to do so. So they can track me on the internet and get in front of me at numerous points, but they don't know me well enough. That's the tough part. You have to know your audience really well and understand what will motivate them to click the ad. Or you have to very clearly understand and define who you are and find the audience that will respond to your message. Either way, it's about messaging, and it is not easy. That's why people have entire careers doing this stuff.
Tim
Very well said and your own reaction and experience clearly demonstrates how important the message is. Adding to this, in today's market it's the message, not the pitch.
99% of my business comes from referrals or the internet.
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There is a company here started by a sales guy from another (now out of business) local audio shop probably 10 to 15 years ago. He got funding and opened a stereo and home theater store and sort of plodded along. His (incredibly attractive and incredibly intelligent) wife joined him some time later and she spent 100% of her time calling on decorators, builders, etc and TOTALLY transformed their business. (They paid off their investors VERY quickly) Much (most) of their current business is home automation. There web site is dominated by their portfolio of business. (AtlantaHomeTheater.com).
If you are in the "product" business, then place banner ads. If you are in the solution business, see the above.
Just my $.02
The importance audioguy highlights here in the target market and referrals is right on the money IMO.
Adding my own perspective:
This is a very specialized area of the market where the products you sell are more part of your tool set than what you sell. Your value lies in providing a solution, an experience, and as Keith Yates likes to say, "creating goosebumps"
. I would argue that establishing and strongly affirming the identity and personality of such a company is much more important than worrying to much about how many views a banner add gets. Communicating the right message to the right people is your goal.
I suspect most of your customers start as secondary sales (=referrals) based on a description provided by a previous customer, hopeful customer, designer/decorator/contractor or an enthusiast familiar with your business. So here's a slightly unsettling revelation...
You will almost never be the one making the first contact a customer has with your company.
IMO, the best means to improve the quality of the introduction you are given is to create a very clear and consistent message affirming what you do, what solution/service you provide, and what is of top importance in your operation. The marketing world would badge the simplest version of this as the elevator pitch which everyone should know, down to the guys pulling wire. Everything else builds from there, where conflicting messages are immediate steps back in marketing efforts.
IMO, your marketing should be as much about providing extensive detail for your customers to research as they make the decision to work with you as it is about educating and familiarizing your company with those who your potential customers will seek advice from. Along these lines, your marketing/advertising would want to communicate why you chose to use a product rather than arbitrary announcements of "We now carry... XYZ whatchamacallit."
I hear you Jack. I have been spending all night actually writing an article on the history and design of our theater and am stuffing it with lots of pictures. The rest of the web site definitely needs more. I put a bunch in last week but more is going to be going there. We are just finishing a local commercial job (Mercedes Dealership) with a massive video wall and such and I have been talking lots of pictures of that to upload and an article to write about it too. Oh boy, so much to do, so little time
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That sounds like a great read, but along the lines of the above, I would suggest that be a "3rd click" article... I.E. first someone clicks on the interesting picture, 2nd they read a highlight/simplification of the above, and 3rd they can read the full saga you are writing.
Finally, I'd also consider that marketing/advertising approaches are received very differently by different age groups and generations. While there are plenty of exceptions, on the average, blatant/obvious advertising is received more and more negatively by younger generations. Many prefer to only be presented with the full barrage of info and sales pitch after engaging and expressing interest. It's that subtle difference of "We offer this solution you need to have!" vs. "We solved this problem. If you've had this problem too, click here to see just what we do."
While all of the above is fairly apparent, and hardly revolutionary, I've found the clarification and continued re-focusing on such things help greatly in saving ourselves from tangent and distracting efforts which don't serve to further build the identity of the company and communicate the desired message.
As Tim opened with... It's the message, not the medium, where in this case it's all about the experience.
