What works better for local SMBs?

Digital marketing.  Online marketing.  Website marketing.  Agencies use these terms and so do small business clients.  It’s what we do and what they want – or is it?

Here’s an assertion:  there is a clear difference today between advertising and marketing, especially online.

We make this assertion because for smaller local businesses, marketing and advertising are concepts that have been interchangeable.  In truth, most SMB in local markets never marketed – they advertised.

Here’s a working definition of the differences:

With online marketing, your goals are to create awareness, inform, make connections, and earn trust.  Sub-sets of this are content marketing and social media marketing.  Content is educational, entertaining, and personalized.  For the most part, it’s not promotional.  No pitch, no overt call-to-action.

Online advertising is promotional.  It has a business offer tied to direct-response copy, calls-to-action, and specific conversion goals.  Pay-per-click advertising, conversion-based design, and remarketing anchor online advertising.

The most important distinction with campaign strategy is:

Online marketing works best for offers that have a long sales cycle and seek to create a brand identity.  Advertising works best with the short sales cycle where you want to convert traffic into sales ready leads.

For example, a company that installs swimming pools – a high ticket item – benefits from content marketing.  They provide information to guide the lead through the longer decision making process.  They extend their benefits story, implying different ways having a pool makes people happy.  Alternatives are acknowledged and explained – even though it may extend or even derail the sales process.  They need to build trust to close the deal.

Plumbers, on the other hand, are mostly looking to advertise.  Leads have an immediate, active need – to the point of emergency.  The sales cycle is short.  Leads search online for a plumber, peruse a few websites, then call whoever feels best and has the most enticing offer.

Plumbers benefit little from trying to get people to subscribe to a blog, follow them on social media, or educate people on major plumbing jobs.  The main thrust is lead generation with conversion-focused content.

In these terms, it’s apparent that many small, service-based business with local targets need to advertise far more than they need to market.  HVAC, janitorial, carpet cleaners, electricians, auto repair, bail bonds – all these involve short sales cycles with immediate needs.

And even businesses like event planners, caterers, contractors, financial planners and lawyers with longer sales cycles really need to weigh their campaigns towards advertising.  The reason being that with the glut of content people are exposed to online, it’s a big challenge for small businesses to create something unique and useful enough gain attention.   The ROI tends to be low.

Advertising and marketing get confused because there is overlap between them, and because there are no absolutes.  A plumber can still market to help with client retention, promote larger jobs with longer sales-cycles, and manage their reputation online.  Unique, useful information can play a strong role in long-cycle lead generation, but for the SMB, it should have a promotional element to it.

For the most part with SMBs, creating brand-level awareness on social media or informational channels is a lot of work for little return.

Advertise and get your traffic to act.  Move them into your sales funnel and look to win the business in as short a cycle as possible.

For many, digital advertising – a complex sounding idea – is really just an evolved form of Yellow Pages ads.  The medium is different but the goal is the same:  get the phone ringing.

If, in the past, most businesses in your vertical won market share mainly through print ads, go with a digital advertising strategy over marketing.  If your advertising isn’t working, marketing won’t do you any good.