I’m always surprised how much businesses—especially small businesses—spend on advertising in print media: newspapers and magazines.

Check out the following chart from KPCB/eMarketer:

While people only spend 8% (and dropping) of their media consumption time with print, advertisers devote 27% of their media budgets to print. On the flipside, advertisers only spend 19% of their budgets on online advertising, yet their audience is spending 25% (and rising) of its media consumption time online.

The problem is exacerbated by the significantly higher cost of print advertising. The following chart is a few years old, but it shows the average CPM (cost per thousand advertising impressions) of various media.

Newspaper costs nearly $65 per 1000 impressions, while online costs less than $4.

Why do small businesses overspend on print advertising? I can think of a few reasons:

• Small businesses are more comfortable with tangible media like newspaper and magazine
• Magazine ads (especially full page color ads in glossy magazines) have a high perceived value. Small businesses likely believe that they will benefit from some sort of “halo effect” from being associated with the magazine
• Small businesses believe that TV is out of reach for them (even though TV is less expensive than print)
• Small businesses reason that it is easier to produce a decent magazine ad than a TV commercial (which is true) and they are afraid that crappy TV-station-produced commercials will negatively impact their brand (also true)

If you want to stretch your ad budget, think about shifting the dollars you spend on print ads to online or TV. Need help? Contact me.

If you are lucky enough to receive a new iPad over the holidays, you’re probably wondering how to fill it up. Here are my humble suggestions (click the image to direct links to the iTunes App Store). Note: This list doesn’t include a bunch of art/photo/video apps that are possibly too specialized for most people.

My Top 5

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REEDER – Awesome RSS reader. Yes, you need to be familiar with how to set up RSS newsfeeds in Google Reader. But that takes 3 minutes to learn.

INSTAPAPER – See an article online that you don’t have time to read right now? Click one button in your browser and the article is sent to Instapaper, where it syncs with your iPad or iPhone to read later. Reading with the Instapaper app is a joy since it strips out all the unnecessary visual junk and formats the page more like a book. Oh yes, Reeder (above) can send articles to Instapaper.

SIMPLENOTE – I have a ton of writing apps on my iPad but I use Simplenote most. It’s a basic, fast, list-oriented notepad that syncs quickly via Dropbox (see below). This means you can have an always-updated list on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac (via the awesome nvALT app).

GOOD READER – Wow. This is the Swiss Army Knife of media consumption apps. It handles PDFs with ease, but can also open everything from MP3s to image files, web pages, MS Office docs, even video.

DROPBOX – Dropbox is the glue that holds the IOS ecosystem together. Get a a free account with 2GB of online storage here then download the app.

Reading Apps

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ZITE – Very cool online “newspaper replacement.” Pick your topics and Zite feeds you stuff to read. You can rate articles (thumbs up or down) to improve the relevancy of what Zite sends you.

KINDLE – Gold standard of e-book apps.

FLIPBOARD – In the vein of Zite, but without Zite’s powerful article recommendations. Still, Flipboard has one advantage: you can hook up your Facebook and Twitter accounts to suck up social media in a nice magazine format.

Outlining Apps

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iTHOUGHTS HD – This mindmapping app is a little pricey, but it is by far the best way to organize your thoughts. Plus you can export OMPL files to import into OmniOutliner (see below).

OMNIOUTLINER – This is the iPad version of Omni’s famous outlining program. Everything about it is incredible, except for its lack of easy Dropbox sync. OmniOutliner is actually one of the few apps in its category that doesn’t sync with Dropbox causing speculation that the next upgrade might include iCloud sync. We can hope.

Video

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NETFLIX – If you have a Netflix account, your iPad has just become a personal movie theatre.

Utilities

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1PASSWORD – You need this app on your Mac if you use more than three passwords. You remember one password, and the app handles the rest. It generates crazy tough passwords (like qZh2idk38n), keeps track of them, and auto-fills them when websites ask. And the iPad version will sync (via Dropbox) to your desktop version.

Games

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SWORD OF FARGOAL LEGENDS – From my friend Jeff comes this fun retro dungeon crawl.

JETPACK JOYRIDE – This is a fast-paced side scroller with neat game mechanics (including a slot machine mini game).

TINY HEROES – Strategy meets arcade action meets humor. Plus you get to play the baddy.

SUPERBROTHERS SWORD & SORCERY – Gorgeous graphics and a weird, lyrical feel. This is somewhere between an art film and a game.

WORLD OF GOO – iPad Game of the Year. Great graphics plus a sense of humor. Check it out.

From CityPockets (via Mashable), an interesting infographic about daily deal adoption.

One of my favorite marketing podcasts is John Wall & Christopher Penn’s Marketing Over Coffee. This week there was a great episode which cited Justin Kistner‘s presentation at SocialFresh Charlotte regarding research about what actually gets shared on Facebook.

Here’s a clip, but it’s worth it to listen to the entire episode and subscribe to this great free podcast.

I’m happy to answer questions about Mercata.

Dan asks:

Could you please tell me if the price went down with each and every buyer, or only with a predetermined number of buyers, in steps? How did the buyers who placed a reasonable, but unaccepted offer, influence the price to go down one more step, before their bid was accepted?

Mercata’s algorithm dropped the price with each buyer along a curve (although depending on the curve, it might be a few dollars or a fraction of a cent).

Customers didn’t “bid” a specific amount per se; they just agreed to buy the item at the current price or lower.*

For example, a baby stroller might have started on a Monday at $300 with a PowerBuy duration of 3 days. Maybe on Tuesday, the price dropped to $275. Let’s say you agreed to buy at that point. But by the time the PowerBuy ended on Wednesday, the price was down to $250. So you (and everyone else) were only charged $250. Customers loved that.

*EDIT: As I thought about this more, I remembered that we did experiment with bidding vs. joining an existing PowerBuy. In my opinion, joining the PowerBuy was a cleaner user experience.

Credit Score Site

I enjoy listening to Copyblogger.com’s podcast — err —  ”internet radio show.” It’s called “Internet Marketing for Smart People Radio” which is a twist on the “Dummies” and “Idiot’s Guide” series. For folks who want a good foundation (and justification) for a Content Marketing strategy, check out the podcast here.

• From the pocast notes:
• Is content marketing really worth the effort?
• The 3 steps to earning loyal (and possibly rabid) customers
• The real effects of content marketing on the bottom line
• Why buying your customers is a difficult and dangerous game
• The simple business plan that’s made Copyblogger (and others) cook

If you only have time to listen to a few minutes of the podcast, fast forward to 17:49 and listen to Sonia Simone quickly lay out the marketing framework that Copyblogger Media uses.

Once you have your niche established, the next step is to create content which will attract readers. Your goal is to create 100 pieces of short content. To do this, you will research and brainstorm the top 100 questions your niche audience might have about the topic.

One way to do this is to find similar sites within your niche and note their most popular articles. You can also explore books and magazines on your topic with the same goal in mind. Remember, at this stage you are only compiling questions. Do not attempt to actually answer the questions yet, and definitely do not copy any answers from the sources you are using to do research.

The ideal questions will be questions considered important by your niche audience (don’t worry if some of these are basic since your site will soon be attracting newbies). Also, keep in mind that you will be answering these questions by creating short articles (blog posts) and possibly podcasts and short online videos.

Note that we haven’t discussed your website yet. This is intentional since at this stage, we are still exploring your niche. In fact, if you find it difficult to write 100 questions over the next few days, the niche is probably not for you and you should go back to step 1 and select a new niche.

Goal

Create a list of the top 100 questions your niche audience might have about your topic.

Articles in this series:

Making Money with Expert Content, Part 1: Choosing a Niche

As I previously mentioned, for the past several months I have been studying the subculture of “Internet marketing” (more accurately known as MMO or “making money online.”) I have also been digging into the “content marketing” (inbound marketing) strategy that many businesses are using as a hedge against the decreasing effectiveness of traditional advertising.

These two fields of study are now converging in my latest series of posts: Making Money with Expert Content — in which I will share the essential strategies and tactics for generating revenue by publishing expert content.

The first step in building your Expert Content business is to determine what your niche will be. Niche is another word for audience segment and it implies a small, defined group with a specific common interest.

While you can choose any one of thousands of niches, the general consensus among MMO experts is that it is best to choose a niche topic that you are both passionate and knowledgeable about.

There are some other criteria you should consider when choosing your niche:

• Are others making money from the niche?
• Is it large enough? What’s the size of the niche?
• Is the niche overcrowded and very competitive?
• Do you have the opportunity to become a recognized expert in the niche?

Ideally, you want a niche that taps into a good sized audience, but is not hyper competitive (like fitness, dating, making money, etc.). Some experts advise narrowing down and specializing within a competitive niche — like fitness for people recovering from sports injuries or dating for dog owners.

One good quick test of a niche is to visit a large bookstore and see if there are books and magazines about your specific topic.

Goal

Choose a niche that is big enough that you will have a decent number of potential customers who buy products and information related to the niche. The niche shouldn’t be so broad that many, many companies compete for the audience. Finally, you must be both passionate and knowledgeable about the topic of the niche. Alternatively, you might partner with an expert in the niche.

We’ll identify what you do next in Part 2.

Last night I saw Hot Tub Time Machine on DVD. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by revealing that the main characters travel back to 1986. It got me thinking about marketing and advertising back in 1986 — when I was just a young copywriter at my first job at a big ad agency in New York.

Back then if you were a larger company, your marketing vehicle of choice was network TV — since you could reach a large majority of consumers by placing ads on the big three networks (Fox was just starting in 1986). If you were a small business, you’d most likely use local newspaper ads and Yellow Page ads to drive business.

Nearly 25 years later, there’s been a dramatic shift in media usage. Fewer people are watching network TV (due to the splintering effect of niche cable TV), TV commercial production and media costs have skyrocketed, local newspapers are closing left and right as their readership plummets, and the only demographic group that still regularly uses the Yellow Pages are senior citizens.

Instead of “pushing” marketing messages at unwilling consumers, many smart companies are trying to “pull” consumers towards their brand by offering  content that their target audience might find of value. I touched upon this idea in a previous post.

If your company is still trying to get its mind around this concept, think about shifting from being “Shillers” to “Helpful Experts.” By this I mean that today it’s becoming less and less less effective to blantantly shill your product or service. But if you publish your expertise in various formats (blogs, online videos, tweets, Facebook messages, email newsletters, articles, etc.), customers will find you. In essence, you become The Helpful Expert in your field. The more you help your prospects, the more likely they wil turn into customers.