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While planning this year’s marketing and advertising spend, a couple of trends have surfaced that may influence where businesses choose to spend their valuable advertising dollars.

Local is Now Social

Local businesses are carving out more money than ever before to put towards social media. This requires an understanding of social media as it relates to business, and there are many resources available that keep local businesses in the loop while so that they can derive real value from building a social presence.

The Best Opportunities are Online

In 2009, the average small business advertising spend consisted of 25% or less in Internet Advertising. Since then, the percentage has risen to 40%, and projections indicate that within the next few years small businesses will be spending 70% of their annual advertising budget delving into the world of web-based marketing and advertising. As competitors pump up their virtual presence, local businesses are seeing more value than ever before in online marketing.

Print is Still Relevant

While the demise of the yellow pages seems inevitable, local businesses are still generating leads through local print listings. The yellow pages have proven to be a cost-effective lead generation tactic for local businesses, and many people still use the yellow pages to locate businesses in their area. While the hype over social media is certainly justified, there are still benefits to using traditional print marketing practices to maximize lead generation.

Is 2012 the “Year of Mobile?”

Mobile commerce has grown exponentially in the past few years, and more people than ever before have a high-powered computer at their fingertips virtually 24 hours a day. The capabilities that mobile has brought to the market have made these devices very promising as an advertising channel. The explosion of mobile popularity has huge implications on small businesses, as more than 30 million users admit to performing shopping related activities on their mobile phone. The latest research indicates that local businesses can seize on this budding market by investing in ad campaigns that are optimized for mobile devices.

Customers are Less Interested in Daily Deals

Customers are losing interest in daily deals according to recent studies. Evidence suggests that businesses are reevaluating their daily deal spend to measure long term growth and profitability. Offering daily deals has also been linked to an influx of bad reviews that could damage a business’s reputation, which is another reason that many advertisers are pulling back from their daily deal campaigns.

If you would like to speak to Net-Craft.com about online marketing for your small business, please contact us today.