by Marco Angioni II

Created on: February 10, 2008   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

With the rise of the Internet and personal, handheld, electronic mediums, the advertising strategies of a company need to change to adapt to these new ways of communication. In its basic form, advertising is merely making the public aware of your product or service so that the public will purchase the same. Therefore, you want to reach as many potential customers as possible for the least amount of money as possible. This used to be accomplished primarily through print media (such as newspapers, magazines, and billboards, to name a few) and through television. However, as state above, due to the increase in popularity in the Internet and other personal, handheld devices, the rules of the games have changed.

It is now essential that a company's marketing plan include a monetary account for Internet advertising. The most common way to advertise on the Internet is to have a website. Websites are relatively inexpensive to own. However, they are costly to design, set-up, and maintain (depending on the complexity of your website and the amount of options that you offer your customers or clients) because, unless you are an Internet website expert, you will have to pay somebody or some company for these services. Even though a website may be costly in those respects, a website (with search engine optimization and easy-to-understand features) can be a large source of revenue for your company without having to expend the labor costs associated with owning a physical store.

Another big way that companies are advertising these days is by broadcasting "podcasts." A podcast is a digital media file which is distributed over the Internet for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Think of it as a radio broadcast that plays like a television show. Straight advertising over a podcast is not advisable because people have to download the media. Therefore, I doubt that many people will download a file just to watch an advertisement. As such, your podcasts need to have some kind of substance outside of your advertisement.

These are just two of the ways that a "traditional" marketing plan needs to be adapted in order to conform to the changing advertising climate. The truth is, as technology increases, these two advertising mediums will evolve to the point that you again need to adapt your marketing plan. The point is, do not make your marketing plan so concrete that you do not allow your company any means by which to evolve with the advertising market.

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