Of Dew Worms and Advertising

A new report from WebVisible, Inc., (summarized here: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/Small-Business-Search-Spending-Rises-Report-Finds-140656/), found that small businesses surveyed spent 30% more on search advertising in the fourth quarter of 2009 vs. the third quarter of 2009, and 111% more than in the fourth quarter of 2008. This, I suppose, could be interpreted as either a sign that economic recovery is taking hold, or, that businesses are realizing that they’re going to have to “spend” their way out of the downtimes via advertising – responsibly of course.

I’m kind of a linear thinker…

1. To gain business, (aka make money), one needs to advertise… somehow, somewhere.


2. To advertise, one needs to spend money (in varying degrees for sure, but even if it’s through word of mouth it’s because you’ve taken the time to do a good job, which has a cost associated with it).


3. Therefore, “to make money one needs to spend money”.

But of course, as much as I wish I’d just coined that phrase, we all already knew that to be true.

I guess what’s surprising is how often it seems that we all think that for some reason we’ll be fine just going it alone. Yes, others need to advertise, but somehow we’ll be the exception. Somehow customers will magically find us because somehow we’re better, smarter, more deserving, etc. etc. Finding, allocating, and spending those advertising dollars is like, well… “stuffing dew worms up a dog’s nose”, (unfortunately I didn’t coin that one either) – it’s tough. (And I deliberately use the terms “we” and “us” as I have lived through my own non-advertising delusional episode with a small business attempt of my wife’s where I discovered a rather direct correlation between a lack of advertising and a lack of business.)

According to the report, the average small business advertiser spent $2,149 on search advertising in the fourth quarter of 2009. Let’s see… $2,149 per quarter times 4 quarters per year = $8,596 a year. Yikes. That sure sounds like a lot of money to me. I think that’s because it is a lot of money to me. But, if you can somehow muster up the courage to open your wallet, the nice thing about advertising is that, as long as it’s done responsibly and it continues to provide sufficient return, it “pays for itself”.

To wrap this up with yet another un-original cliché, (is there such a thing as an original cliché?), all things considered, with advertising you typically “get what you pay for”. Or, as my own sad personal case study would suggest, you don’t get what you don’t pay for.