The cover story on Bloomberg Businessweek was entitled, “Fake web traffic will cost companies more than $6 billion this year. An exclusive investigation into the bots that ate your ad budget.” Then you flip to the article itself and see another headline, “Marketers thought the web would allow perfectly targeted ads. Hasn’t worked out that way.”

Over the years I’ve seen small B2Bs become enamored with the fax machine, the word processor, direct mail, telemarketing, and email as different marketing tactics in their attempts to reach specific market niches.

The pesky problem, however, is always results: marketing return-on-investment. How much does it cost for exposure to specific niches, how much does the list cost, how reliable is the list, etc., etc? This is what got hammered home in the Businessweek article.

There is one marketing tactic, however, which has become even more valuable today because of the internet, social media, blogs, etc. and that is product publicity.

This was reinforced by Abby Robey, Sales & Marketing Manager of Xuron Corporation who said, “I had a phone call from one of our Manufacturer’s Reps who told me that he was bombarded with inquiries for Xuron products – he wondered if we were doing some kind of new advertising. To me the answer is simple – it’s the publicity. Also, our Web traffic continues to grow on a monthly basis. I can’t think of a better, or more cost effective way for us to reach so many markets.”

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© Steven M. Stroum