Advertising is important. If you’re not sure why, this article may serve as a reminder. In this article, you will see a comparison of traditional media advertising costs vs. online media marketing costs. It can help you make a more informed decision as to what approach in advertising may fit your business best.

Firstly, “advertising” and “marketing” are two different things. Wikipedia defines “marketing” as “the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers.” It goes on to add “It is a critical business function for attracting customers.” Wikipedia defines “advertising” as “a form of communication for marketing and used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action.” So to be clear, advertising is one form of communication used in marketing whereas marketing is a process that contains many different forms of communication.

Sample of Traditional Media Advertising (In This Case, a Major National Newspaper)

Below we have some actual numbers from a media kit of a major newspaper. As you will see from the snippets and from our mathematical break-down, a 3-inch by 3-inch advertisement (9 column inches) would cost:

• $5,994 for one day
• $36,981 total for 7 days ($5,283 per day)
• $133,308 for 28 days ($4,761 per day)
• $359,856 for 84 days ($4,284 per day)

The costs here does not include the cost of creating your advertisement. If you are ready to spend this amount of money for your advertising campaign, you will probably want to hire a professional or agency to create your advertisement to ensure your message is effective. If you save a “few dollars” but end up creating an ineffective message or advertisement, you will just end up wasting your advertising dollars (and in this case, that’s a lot of money!)

Here is the mathematical breakdown from the media kit to explain the cost of a newspaper advertisement. (Please note that “x” means multiply and “/” means divide and the advertisement used for calculation here is a 3-inch by 3-inch = 9 column-inch advertisement.):

• 9 column-inches x $666 per column-inch at national rate = 9 x $666 =
  $5,994 for 1-day display for a 9 column-inch (or square-inch) advertisement
• 63 column-inches (total purchase) x $587 per column-inch at national rate = 63 x $587 =
  $36,981 for 7-day ($5,283 per day) display for a 9 column-inch (or square-inch) advertisement
• 252 column-inches (total purchase) x $529 per column-inch at national rate = 252 x $529 =
  $133,308 for 28-day ($4,761 per day) display for a 9 column-inch (or square-inch) advertisement
• 756 column-inches (total purchase) x $476 per column-inch at national rate = 756 x $476 =
  $359,856 for 84-day ($4,284 per day) display for a 9 column-inch (or square-inch) advertisement

Sample Online Media Marketing Campaign

Here is a list of items that were included in an online media marketing campaign for a small business:

• Customized and crafted marketing campaign for Facebook
• Facebook updates regarding products/services, promotions
• Business event announcements and reminders on Facebook
• Facebook fans/follower interaction and engagement by live team
• Customized and crafted marketing campaign for Twitter
• Twitter updates regarding products/services, promotions
• Business event announcements and reminders on Twitter
• Twitter follower interaction and engagement by live team
• Positive Yelp reviews by real and existing customers with positive experience with the business

This customized marketing campaign that involved Facebook, Twitter and Yelp cost a fraction of what it would cost to advertise in traditional media. The campaign and the work included a substantial amount of work and interaction using live people. As you can also imagine, much of the content that were generated as a result of the campaign will remain online indefinitely.

Now, let’s compare the traditional advertising and online marketing side-by-side:

Traditional Media Advertising Overview:

Cost of Campaign:  High to Very High

Longevity of Your Content: Very short; it will last as long as the reader keeps the printed newspaper or print-material. If it is a television or radio advertisement, the advertisement will last as long as the length of the commercial.

Measurablilty of Campaign: Difficult. Have you considered how would you measure a campaign’s effectiveness from a newspaper, magazine, television or radio advertisement? How do you know how many people actually watched and saw your newspaper, magazine, television, radio advertisement?

Online Media Marketing Overview:

Cost of Campaign: Low to High

Longevity of Your Content: Long life; any content created as a result of your campaign will likely last for a while and remain searchable by the public through search engines like Google and Bing, and can be found on the websites they were posted on indefinitely.

Measurablilty of Campaign: Very good measurability. In fact, online campaigns are probably the only form of truly measureable campaigns where you can see what is working and what isn’t working so you can adjust and tweak your campaign accordingly.

Online marketing campaigns have many advantages over traditional media. We’re not saying traditional media is bad or that you should abandon it. Instead, we’re saying you need to factor in online media into your marketing plans, if you haven’t already. If you already have online marketing included in your marketing plan, then you should be continually adjusting and tweaking your plan. The Web doesn’t stand still and neither should your marketing plan.