The recent revelation that $14 billion in co-op advertising dollars go unused each year made me wonder what other areas of marketing are underutilized.
Co-op remains the biggest omission. It is not only a grossly underused marketing asset – co-op’s lack of use is actually growing. The amount of unused co-op dollars has doubled over the last 3 years. There’s a huge opportunity for budget constrained local businesses to get help with content creation, subsidy of marketing and advertising output, or even ad costs that are completely paid for.
While there are plenty of opportunities for digital co-op dollars, it also would be prudent for businesses who are only using digital marketing solutions to look at some traditional channels that might be significantly discounted or free after co-op contributions from brand owners.
Other areas of marketing that are underutilized include:
- Converting unstructured data into structured data that would provide significantly greater insight into customer trends and feedback.
- Incorporating the Pareto Principle to maximize your best performing marketing strategies.
- Transform the 60-80% of content you’ve already created but never used into productive content.
- Boosting your SEO’s or SEM’s ROI with a little time spent on Google+.
Check out my full column on Search Engine Land for the details.
