History of the past 100 years of advertising.

Whether your small business is based solely on the web, or if you have a brick and mortar store where you sell your goods and services it is extremely important to understand how technology has influenced successful marketing campaigns over the years. 

Ready for your history lesson?

Let’s start with radio. The first radio advertisements were simply announcements that benefited the owners of the stations. No money ever traded hands, however it didn’t take long until savvy business owners took advantage of this new medium. In 1922 Remik’s Music Store (based out of Seattle, WA) sponsored a program on KFC, a radio station that was partly owned by a Seattle based newspaper. Remik’s sponsored the radio show by promoting the program with large ads in the newspaper and invited people to buy songs that were just performed. Radio ads proved to be very effective compared to advertising in print alone, and even more so when owners combined both print and radio advertising. Soon, local DJs started to build reputations with their audience. Their listeners purchased the products or services that were mentioned by the on-air celebrity. Later, professionally produced spots included sound effects, background music, dialogue with numerous personalities, and jingles became an effective way of advertising to listeners. Studies showed that the quality of the commercials was just as important as the number of ads that they heard.

Television gives radio a run for it’s money. The first television advertisement was for a 20 second Bulova spot before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. It displayed an image of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States accompanied with a simple voice over that said “America runs on Bulova time.” (For anyone keeping score, the Phillies beat the Dodgers that day by a score of six to four). It wasn’t until 1990 until advertising on television became affordable to small businesses. Personal computers had advanced to the point where local broadcasters could use them for video production on local cable TV stations. Unlike radio, advertisers could represent their brand visually as well as with sound. Some ads, such as the Winston cigarettes commercials became so popular they ran for 20 years.

Television is still the dominant advertising medium today, Even though 50% of all TV homes will use a DVR by 2016, most viewers are still watching commercials. In fact, DVRs actually increased the rating for commercials by 44%. 

Internet now competes with radio, and television. Prodigy, a company owned by IBM and Sears, ran the first advertisement on the internet and promoted Sears products  in the early 1980s. Prodigy even ran advertisements for AOL, which one of Prodigy’s direct competitors. Global Network Navigator was the first commercial web publication offering clickable advertisements which we all know as banner ads. Internet advertising has grown to include many forms of advertising such as:

• Search engine result pages: Probably the most popular form as everyone is familiar with Google’s textually relevant ads

• Rich Media Ads: These are ads that have video and/or audio. They are typically using Adobe’s Flash technology, but ads written in HTML 5 are starting to appear as well.

• Social network advertising: If you use Twitter, then you’ve probably seen companies talking about sales, coupons, or just bringing their followers up to speed. The same is done on Facebook as well.

Internet advertising is getting more and more popular. Internet advertising revenues hit  record spending amounts in 2011. This is partly because affluent persons are actually using the internet more than television. Internet based advertising is only going to increase, especially when companies like Hulu are able to provide valuable free content.

What else is out there? There are literally thousands of different advertising ideas that you can use for your small business. You will need to base your decisions on your demographic, and what you are able to offer to your customer. Sometimes a special niche form of advertising might provide you with the results you are after. For example, a travel site might want to advertise on the mini-TVs in metropolitan taxis because that is the demographic they are trying to attract, or an smartphone case maker may want to advertise on a smartphone app because they can target customers that only have smartphones.

America has a love and hate relationship with advertising. It’s up to you to ensure that you stay loved.

For more information on how Tonangi Design & Media can create a website or produce a video for business visit www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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Top 5 Mistakes Small Business Websites Make

As a small business owner your website is a critical piece that attracts and informs customers, and in many cases the website IS your entire business. Sometimes small business owners don't give the design of their website as high of a priority as it should be. This makes it difficult for people to use, and therefore they loose out on sales. Here are the Top 5 problems that small business owners make:

Number 5: Poor grammar and spelling

This sounds like an easy one to fix, but unfortunately it happens way to often. Seeing mistakes (especially spelling errors) is a big turn off to many customers because it makes them feel like the website was done in a hurry with no care to detail. A customer may think if that is how a company treats an important marketing tool. They might think 'how would they treat a customer' ? There are easy solutions to this. There are paid tools that you can use to scan your website and and send you reports on spelling issues if your website is already live. The best solution is too stimply use a word processor that can check for simple spelling and grammar errors.

Number 4: Unusable on popular mobile devices

There is no doubt that smartphones and tablets are becoming more and more popular. Gartner predicts that mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most common web access device by 2013. These devices are allowing customers to use technology on-the-go. It s a shame that so many mom and pop places have utilized web designers that created entire websites that are completely unusable on mobile devices. This means customers that are searching for more information about the products or services you offer are simply just going to use a competitor that doesn't have this problem. This problem is really apparent with many restaurants and bars.

Number 3: Poor taste

Some small business owners want to put so many bells and whistles on their site, that their website starts to look comical, rather than a professional website hoping to attract new business. Now, I m not talking about poor user interface design (we ll talk about that in a minute), I m simply talking about websites that have poor taste. One of the sites that stick out in my mind is www.vacaway.com. The overly utilized flash-based animation, and lack of a clear sales message sends customers to competitors that help individuals understand what products it offers and the differences between them.Oh, and btw if you think their home page is bad, then you probably won't want to visit their product page. Your website should be clean and simple. Animation and motion design is not necessary a bad thing if done the right way, but there is a difference between annoying designs that use animation for no purpose and one that is done the right way and has a purpose.

Number 2: Lack of content

People come to your small business for one of two reasons. Either they are looking to make a direct purchase, or they are looking for information. If your website doesn't have the content that customers want then your website serves little or no purpose. Information doesn't have to be only in text. Your information could be in the form of a video which many people actually prefer, but you must provide your customers with appropriate content.

Number 1: Poor UI (user experience)

This is the number one reason because ppor UI design has contributed more to the loss of revenue than almost any other reason that I've listed here today. I could present quite a few examples of poor UI design, but I doubt any would come close to this. When customers can't figure out where to go to perform a certain action they will leave. Statistics show that customers will wait between 4-7 seconds before they decide whether the site will provide them with the information they are looking for.  If customers have difficultly using your site they will not stick around, and you will loose revenue.

It s critically important that your website creates a positive first impression, and ensures that a customer can easily research the information they are looking for, and find a way to purchase the product or service that they are interested in buying. For some companies, that can be as simple as a contact form, but for eCommerce websites it is important that customers can easily find a way to research and purchase your product or service without having to stare at a sitemap or a diagram.

Design matters!

For more information on how Tonangi Design & Media can create a website or produce a video for business visit www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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You really only get one chance to make a first impression

Tonangi Media & Design originally focused on producing videos for the internet and television, but many of our small business customers had a problem that we couldn't simply ignore any longer - their website. 

Many times your website is the absolute first interaction that customers have with your company. Some businesses do not feel that their website is of any great importance, especially when they have a brick & mortar store where they expect their customer to make their first impression of their business. However in today's world this is simply not the case.

Customers are using technology to find businesses that offer the products and services that they want and ultimately a customer uses your website to determine if you can offer the product or service that they are looking to purchase. There are many factors that a small business should consider when designing (or redesigning) their website. This includes: colors, branding, usability, typography, layout, and overall quality of your presentation. Even though there are some do-it-yourself templates usually offered by hosting companies, these typically do not take make use of up to date technology and can make your website seem amateurish. Another problem is that many of these templates simply don't work on mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads. There have been many times I have been walking around looking for a place to eat or drink and when I try to visit a restaurant or bar's website it's completely unusable on my mobile device. So I do what most people do -  I simply just try the next closest place. Those businesses probably don't think that their website is very important, but if customers can't see the content on their website then they are not going to visit your establishment.

So now that we have established that your website should be considered a priority, what can you do about it? Even if you happen to know HTML, CSS, and Javascript do you really have the time to design and code a website that can be used on virtually every device? Do you know how to create a website that is Google-friendly? The solution is to hire a professional to design your site with your needs in mind. This does not have to be an expensive undertaking, nor does it need to take months to accomplish.

Tonangi Media & Design has added web design and development to the services that we can be provide. Over the past two years, we've seen small businesses struggle with their website, and we have made redesigns for companies that have utilized us for video production in the past. This change comes naturally, as I, Vinod Tonangi (founder of Tonangi Design & Media), have been creating websites since 1999. Tonangi Design & Media  can develop your website, create a video for use on television and the web, and advertise your company using various methods.

For more information on how Tonangi Design & Media can create a website for business visit www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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All you need is a little ingenuity

When it comes to marketing most people believe that you need a large budget to get your message across. Well if you believe that, then a recent customer of Tonangi Media would have to disagree. The Skin Spa, a Manhattan based skin treatment center, wanted to inform their customers on some of the most popular procedures being performed. They did not have the budget to hire actors, and actresses but they wanted to create videos that could be played on their website and on television screens in their two locations.

The client informed us that even though the information is readily available on their website very few (if any), of their customers bothered to read the information. In general, we have found this to be quite true. Potential customers will not spend their time reading information, however if the content is shown in short, well produced video your message will be heard.

Tonangi Media created 5 separate videos for them. Each one described a certain service and featured their own employees. Since these were not trained professionals they needed assistance both in the form of direction during the shoot as well quite a bit of post production editing. Here is the result of one of the videos that we produced:

These videos are helping The Skin Spa attract customers by having these videos available on the web for viewers to watch, as well as on their website, and played in their locations. Even though these videos were primarily shot for the web, Tonangi Media recorded and produced all videos in 1080p. This means when they want to do something new they have the possibility of saving production costs in the future by utilizing shots that were already recorded. These recordings can be used for television commercials, for display purposes in the office in High Definition, and can even be used to display these videos in hotels, or other tourist areas to drive even more business to the Skin Spa.

Without spending an incredible amount of money, The Skin Spa was able to attract customers, and have ready to use high definition custom recorded content for future use. 

For more information on how Tonangi Media can create a video for your small business visit our website at www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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Combine Guerrilla Marketing with Traditional Advertising Strategies

Most small businesses don't have advertising budgets that allow them to spend tens of thousands of dollars a month, but most advertising solutions require about $10,000 a month to gain any effectiveness. Take Google Adwords for example. When it first started it was fairly cheap costing only a few thousand dollars a month to get quite a few customers to your website. While this did not directly influence sales this did mean more traffic, and with more traffic you can usually expect more sales. Then Google changed their pricing strategy and large companies starting taking advantage of Google Adwords. Since Adwords is a bid-based pricing product the more companies that used Google Adwords the more expensive it becomes to get even one click. Unless you have a product that has very little competition it would be pretty difficult for you to spend a few thousand dollars and gain enough customers to make it worth your time managing your Google Adwords campaign.

Then small businesses moved over to using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but now that so many other large companies are using it to advertise their products and services, real users of these sites now view the majority of company accounts as spam and rarely even visit or read any of the information that is posted. 

With the recession decreasing the amount of customers that usually are willing to pay for your product or service it may seem like small businesses have no other alternative but to give up. Many small businesses already have, but there is hope because there are other solutions for small businesses to use. 

Small businesses can combine guerrilla marketing with traditional advertising strategies to gain exposure, and acquire paying customers. Let the current technology work for you instead of against you. It's amazing how many small businesses contact me for television commercials but don't yet have a website. In this day and age you can create a website with little or no technical knowledge, and place photos, videos, and other information so people can get the information they are looking for. If you don't want to do it yourself there are literally hundreds of thousands of web developers all over the world that can create one for you very cheaply. Personally, I recommend NY Web Design. However, this is only the first step. A website simply contains information about your product or service, but if no one knows about your company then it will never be visited. 

Many customers ask me to create videos under 3 minutes in length to post on their site, as well as other video sites such as YouTube, Viddler, DailiyMotion and countless others. This creates exposure for your company on sites where millions of people are already watching hundreds of millions of other videos. These sites are free to join and even offer sponsorship opportunities to increase your exposure.

This strategy works quite well, because video results on YouTube tend to show up before other Google search results. This means you don't have to spend all that money on SEO (search engine optimization). You can simply create a video and upload it to ten or twenty video sites and when people search for your keywords they will watch your video and get to your website where they can then contact you, or purchase your product right online.

Creating a video does not have to cost a fortune. In fact, Tonangi Media has reduced its prices in an effort to help small businesses remain in their marketing budget. For more information on how Tonangi Media can create a video for your small business please visit our website at www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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