It was William Lever, founder of Lever Brothers with his brother James, who first lamented that half his advertising did not work, but he did not know which half.
Such is possibly the biggest value of digital advertising campaigns versus traditional ones: you have a much better way of knowing which half of your advertising works, and then at least you can tweak it so that you get a better than 50% hit rate.
A few years ago there was a company that did a mostly outdoor campaign that had a different sms code for each call to action on each medium, which was a smart way of tracking which advertising was the most effective. But other than that, in the past the only way of knowing if an ad campaign worked, was to trial and error the sales based on placing adverts.
Digital advertising is far more effective. Thanks to Google Analytics and other ways of analysing activity, digital advertising is far easier to measure, and therefore it is possible to quantify its effectiveness. In a world where marketing spend is being squeezed for every penny, and accountability has become the watchword, this is a very good thing – you can actually measure the success of your campaigns. Google Analytics will even tell you which search terms are getting the best responses.
What does this mean to you as a small business owner? If you have a small marketing budget, and your product lends itself effectively to online interest, then try digital first before you waste money on any other medium. Google Adwords and Facebook Ads alone could connect you with a considerably sized market, and that may even be enough to sustain your business. Give it a try.