Many of you
know that in my first career I was a newspaper reporter and editor. I worked at mostly small papers.
Important to Our Community
As a small-town journalist (not small-time), I used to tell myself and others that the reporting and writing we did was just as important to our community as the work the New York Times did for its community.
What I didn’t appreciate then was how important newspaper advertising was to the community.
But now, 50 years later, businesses no longer see newspaper advertising as an effective marketing practice. In fact, in a Borrell Associates survey last fall, only 21 percent of local ad
buyers said newspaper advertising was very or extremely effective.
Reversal of Fortune
And – incredibly, dishearteningly even – 36 percent said newspaper advertising was not at all or only slightly effective.
A colleague used to say that if you wanted to show the effectiveness of newspaper ads, all you had to do was place an ad that said "Free shoes!"Â Â
At the time, he was right. Now, though, so few people read newspapers that the "free shoes" offer would likely result in a small number of takers.
What local ad buyers now see as the most effective advertising method didn’t exist 50 years ago. It’s search engine marketing, aka Google Ads.
What’s Different?
Why the change? First of all, despite my colleague’s assertion about the "free shoes" ad, it’s nearly
impossible to really say whether a newspaper ad is effective.
Newspapers touted their circulation numbers and even asserted that because there were (then) likely several people in a household, the number of people seeing an ad was potentially higher than the circulation.
But online marketing, including Google Ads, is all about the metrics. Google can tell an advertiser with a high degree of certainty how many times an ad flashed in front of someone on the web; how many times the ad was clicked; and what action (a purchase, for example) was taken after the click, if any.
Those are the new standards for advertising effectiveness, and old media like newspapers, magazines and the yellow pages, can’t tell advertisers the same story.
Jargon-Busting: What Is a UTM?
Deep in the weeds of a conversion about online marketing and analytics, you might overhear talk about UTMs.
This has nothing to do with urinary tracts. UTMs are a piece of code
that marketers append to website addresses. The code helps track the origin of visits to your website.
UTMs usually include a source, like Google or Facebook; a medium, like an ad, your newsletter or a social media post; and a campaign name, like January Google Ads or Jan. 30 newsletter. It can include a few other bits of information as well.
Why is called a UTM? The acronym stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was the name of an early internet analytics provider that was purchased by Google in 2005.
There’s a Free Tool
You don’t have to know how to code to create UTMs. Google offers a free tool, the URL Builder, in which you fill in the basics – the main URL, the source, the medium, the campaign.
Then the tool automatically creates the full URL, which you can copy and paste into whatever you’re creating.
When you need to track the effectiveness of your advertising and social
media campaigns, adding UTMs to the links is valuable. And Google’s URL Builder makes it easy.
The next newsletter arrives Feb. 13. By then I hope you’ll be recovered from whatever Super Bowl party you’re planning to attend. Which
version of red and gold is your favorite?
And should the Monday after the Super Bowl be declared a national holiday so everyone can sleep in? Nah …
As ever, be grateful. Be generous. Be patient. Love.
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Thanks for spending some of your time with me, . I appreciate you.
Mark
P.S. - This newsletter was created entirely by me, a human. If any parts of my newsletters are generated by artificial intelligence, I’ll disclose it here.
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which could generate small commissions for me at no extra cost to you.
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