AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

 

I may be posting this message at 9:30 AM but this post isn’t your daily wake-up call, this is your 2007 marketing wake-up call.  Internet advertising statistics clearly indicate a massive shift in the way marketers are reaching their audiences.  Specifically, Internet advertising revenues for 2006 are going to come in  at a record 16.8 billion, a 34% increase over the previous record of $12.5 billion in 2005.

If you are a small-cap company trying to reach new investors and new audiences, you have to take note of the figures and begin implementing your own online investor relations strategy. Why?  4 big reasons:

1. 95% of small-cap companies have limited budgets, so making “every dollar count” is more than a catch phrase, it is a mantra.
2. E-mail marketing/promotion is dead.  Stock spam is ineffective and will land you in a great deal of trouble with regulators.  Read my past post on this and watch the accompanying speach I gave at PIPEs 2006.
3. Online marketing is the best and most cost-effective way to connect with your precise target market.  The broad scope of print and direct mail don’t even come close when you consider the fact you can use Google/Yahoo/MSN to target investors at granular levels.
4. Once you’ve pinpointed a specific audience of investors, the viral nature of the web allows your message to proliferate even deeper and faster – and it is free because investors do all the work for you!

If you are looking for more support to back this up, look no further than the following comment from a director of PriceWaterhouseCoopers:

“The maturation of the Internet as an effective advertising medium is directly tied to its ability to deliver qualified audiences to marketers,” said Peter Petrusky, director, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

As many of you know, AGORACOM saw this trend coming last summer and announced the first ever Google IR programs for small-cap companies.  This will soon be expanded to Yahoo and MSN.  As of today, we’re spending over $25,000/month on behalf of clients (kudos to the early adopters) but this is still only scratching the surface. 

Given the fact we can target investors in sectors such as technology, metals, energy, medical, clean-tech, etc, etc. the sky is the limit as to how many companies can use internet marketing without ever overlapping each other.

Thanks and have a great day.

Regards,
George

p.s.  Annual internet advertising in Canada surpassed the $1 Billion mark for the first time and is climbing by more than 30%.