A Worthwhile New Year's Resolution - Invest Your Marketing Dollars Online

Welcome to 2008! It's a new year, which means it's time for a new year's resolution. The common ones are to get into beach shape, read more, make more time for family, and the like. However, decision makers also tend to make resolutions for their organizations, most of the time relating to the growth and service that they hope to maintain in the new year. Well, this is the year to make sure that you include online efforts in your new year's resolution.

A recent Wall Street Journal article elaborates on why this is the year that new media spending should own a nice portion of your budget. Some of the article's featured statistics that demonstrate how important new media will be in the coming year are:

• 70% of Americans actively use the Internet for everything from educational research and social networking to online shopping.
• There are 1.24 billion active Internet users worldwide
• Online sales, excluding travel, grew 19% in 2007 with no signs of slowing down in ‘08/

The stats speak for themselves - a modest investment online gives you the opportunity to reach 70% of the nation!

However, this doesn't mean that you can just throw up a cheap brochure site and you'll capitalize on the opportunity of the Internet. Like any marketing campaign, it's important to invest time and money (although, the Internet allows you to spend much less money than most other marketing campaigns) into your online presence.

You want to be sure that you're leveraging the Internet, not just taking up space. So, your new year's resolution shouldn't be simply to "be online," but it should be to "win online." This means having an interactive, engaging, and attractive website. It also means keeping your site frequently updated and fresh. It means continuing to scale your site and take advantage of new technologies. By doing these things, you can be sure that your '08 marketing budget will get a better return than the one in '07 that consisted simply of cold calls.

If you have any questions about other ways to maximize your online presence, we encourage you to get into contact with us about how we leverage the Internet for our clients. Also, please browse our portfolio firsthand to see interactive campaigns we've put together for organizations of all sizes.

Happy new year!

Clay Schossow
Lead Project Manager
cschossow@newmediacampaigns.com