Last year, $260 million in marketing was spent online to reach Fayetteville, North Carolina area consumers, according to projections based on the 2021 IAB Internal Advertising Report.  This is 35% more than was spent during the prior year.

There is a correlation between the massive amount of money being spent to reach Fayetteville consumers online and the extraordinary amount of time that these consumers are connecting to the internet via websites and apps.

According to Nielsen, 37.3% of Fayetteville adults are spending 10-plus hours during an average week online. Furthermore, The Pew Research Center, a public opinion research company, reports that one-in-three consumers say they are online constantly. A 50% increase from 2015.  In all, 85% of consumers say they connect at least once daily.

To successfully market and advertise a Fayetteville business on the internet requires a full-scale understanding of precisely what online marketing is.  Spoiler alert, having a website or having a social media site is not enough.

Right now, at least one of the 9,852 businesses located in the Fayetteville, NC area is thinking about using the phrase 'March Madness' as part of upcoming advertising and marketing plans. Why not? It's a great use of alliteration. It's a familiar term. And, it's that time of year.

A furniture store in Hope Mills might think it would be clever to use 'March Madness' in its commercials on Fayetteville radio to promote a big spring sale. A non-profit in Fort Bragg feels it would be a good way to describe its charity fun run on social media and online advertising. A sports bar in Spring Lake believes it would be a no-brainer to use the term in streaming video and audio ads to bring in scores of basketball fans.

It is, indeed,  tempting for a Fayetteville small business owner to use this term for advertising or marketing purposes. But,  to avoid a costly legal battle, the use of this trademarked phrase should be a non-starter. Here's why.

Fayetteville, North Carolina area business owners are expected to spend $82 million advertising online in 2022. This, according to Borrell Associates, a company that tracks advertising expenditures across the country.

Borrell's forecast indicates that almost 50% of Fayetteville's online expenditures will be in the form of paid search. The most recognizable type of this advertising is the paid ads that appear adjacent to the results of almost every search query on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Borrell's forecast also indicates that approximately 27% of online expenditures will be in the form of display advertising. This consists of traditional banner ads that appear across millions of websites and apps, including social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. According to SmallBizGenius.net, the average Fayetteville area consumer is served more than 1700 of these ads per month.

Video advertising in Fayetteville is forecast to account for 23% of all online ad dollars in 2022. Like search and display, millions of websites can support this type of advertising. This includes sites, apps, and platforms like YouTube, Roku Channel, Hulu, Paramount+, and most social media sites.

The remainder of online advertising dollars is expected to be spent on audio advertising, including streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify; or email marketing campaigns.

There are 8690 small businesses in the Fayetteville, North Carolina Metro Area, according to the US Census Bureau. Based on projections from the National Federation of Independent Business Owners (NFIB), nearly half of these companies have job openings they cannot fill.

As a result of the acute labor shortage, says the NFIB, 29% of small business owners rank the quality of labor as the most important problem they face. A year ago, only 21% said finding workers was their biggest issue.

The labor crunch in the Fayetteville area is being driven, in big part, by a record-high number of employees voluntarily quitting their jobs. Just last month, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.5 million employees across the country left their current place of employment.

According to the Wall Street Journal, those who are not currently working say they are in no hurry to return to the workforce. The lack of urgency stems from five primary reasons:

• 29% say they don't need to work right now because their spouse is employed
• 28% say they cannot return to work because of care responsibilities at home
• 25% say they don't need to return to work because they have a financial cushion
• 20% say they are fearful of returning to work because of COVID-19
• 5% say they do not need to return because of current unemployment benefits

There seems to be little chance that these resigned workers can be lured back into the labor force. Therefore, to fill open jobs, local business owners will need to focus their efforts towards recruiting among Fayetteville's "passive" job candidates.

Every month, 248,370 adults in Fayetteville, North Carolina use social media, according to Nielsen. Seventy-six percent of these consumers use Facebook, far more than other sites like Instagram (also owned by Facebook), Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

As a stand-alone medium, Facebook is used by more people in Fayetteville than watch local TV stations. Only Fayetteville radio and local cable reach more consumers.

The large audience commanded by social media has attracted a significant amount of advertising dollars from local advertisers. According to Borrell Associates, a company that measures advertising expenditures across the county, Fayetteville area businesses are expected to spend $21 million on social media advertising, a 25.5% increase over 2022. The overwhelming majority of these dollars are being spent with Facebook.

Yesterday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was changing its name to "Meta".  This change, though, only affects the name of the parent company. There will be no change to the company's brands like Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

How will this name change affect Fayetteville businesses that advertise on Facebook?

More than 94% of Fayetteville adults have access to the internet.  Ubiquitous technology such as computers, tablets, smartphones, and connected TVs allow North Carolina consumers to go online whenever they choose, which, for some adults, is always.

The Pew Research Center, a public opinion research company, reports that one-in-three consumers say they are online constantly. A 50% increase from 2015.  In total, 85% of consumers say they connect at least one time every day.

So, how are Fayetteville consumers spending all this time connected to the internet?

According to Nielsen, streaming audio and video content, social networking, checking the weather, and banking are the top online activities for Fayetteville consumers each month.

The number of job openings in the Fayetteville area has exceeded pre-pandemic levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Businesses of all sizes are adding employees in a big way, according to the ADP Research Institute, but still, large numbers of positions remain unfilled.

With the North Carolina unemployment rate still at 5.2%, Fayetteville business owners wonder why they are having difficulty attracting applicants for open positions.

According to a recent article posted in The Economist, there are two major reasons why many sidelined workers aren't anxious to come to work. The first is fear.

Fayetteville, North Carolina area business owners are expected to invest $65-million during 2021 to advertise to consumers connected to the internet. This forecast was produced by Borrell Associates, a company that tracks business advertising expenditures across the country.

These online marketing dollars will be spent on banner advertising, search engine marketing, email, as well as audio and video advertising. This is all to capture the attention of shoppers and buyers as they go about their connected days.

According to Nielsen, 94% of adult consumers in the Fayetteville area have access to the internet. They connect, primarily, with desktop and laptop computers; smartphones; or tablets.

Ninety-four percent of Fayetteville adults spend at least one hour per week online, with most spending at least 10 hours connected.

How important is Twitter to Fayetteville area consumers? Yesterday, for instance, the social media platform was mentioned in at least ten articles published by the Fayetteville Observer yesterday.  Almost every local TV newscast included references to the site as well.

Twitter's outsized presence in the news, however, is enormously disproportional to the importance of the micro-blogging app in the life of Fayetteville's consumers.

According to Nielsen, only about 16% of adults in Fayetteville use Twitter during the course of a month. This is minuscule compared to other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

Twitter offers 20 different options that North Carolina small business owners can utilize to market their goods and services to local consumers.  The platform's minimal reach, however, can hamper the success of any advertising campaign.

Ninety-four percent of Fayetteville adults have access to the internet, according to Nielsen. Almost 60% of these consumers spend more than five hours a week connected.

Nielsen reports that Fayetteville consumers go online to stay connected to friends and family; research products and services; learn the latest news, and obtain directions to where they are going and know what the weather will be when they get there.  

Here are some of the many reasons why Fayetteville internet users go online each month

• Social Media: 72%
• Weather: 46%
• Maps/Directions: 43%
• Online Banking: 35%
• Product Reviews: 29%
• Sports Scores/News: 22%
• Current Events: 22%
• Restaurant Reviews:19%
• Job Search: 17%
• Real Estate: 12%

And, of course, there is shopping.  Over the past three months, according to Nielsen, 71.8% of Fayetteville consumers shopped online for every imaginable product and service including, cars, golf clubs, office supplies, wedding rings, mattresses, tires, medicine, shoes, socks, and eyeglasses.

To reach local consumers while they are online, Fayetteville businesses will spend $65 million for digital advertising in 2020, according to Borrell Associates.  Here is how the money is being spent:

Following the lead of many national marketers, some Fayetteville area small business owners are considering canceling or, at minimum, pausing their advertising schedules with social media network Facebook and its co-owned photo-sharing platform, Instagram.

According to the New York Times, "more than 400 companies, from Coca-Cola and Adidas to Ford and Lego, have vowed to halt advertising on the social network, in a growing protest over how it handles hate speech and other harmful content".

With the pandemic figured in, Fayetteville small business owners were expected to spend $11 million on Facebook and Instagram advertising in 2020. This is according to Borrell Associates, a firm that specializes in the collection and analysis of local marketing expenditures in every city across the United States. But these expenditures could shrink if the protests become louder.

Every type of North Carolina business imaginable, including clothing stores, plumbers, HVAC repair, funeral homes, restaurants, dentists, and nonprofits, has come to realize how powerfully social media can contribute to their bottom lines.

Part of what makes Facebook and Instagram attractive to small business owners is the enormous reach these platforms have among consumers. Locally, the audience size for these two social media sites now rival Fayetteville radio, TV, cable, and newspaper outlets.

For small business owners considering a hiatus from social media advertising, there is a viable way to redirect these dollars into a different medium without losing the marketing equity or momentum built-up on Facebook.

Type "Fayetteville REAL ESTATE AGENTS" into Google. In slightly over a half-second, the search will deliver 5,080,000 results. Similar searches for Hope Mills, Dunn, Lumberton, Spring Lake, or Ft. Bragg produce a proportional number of returns.

Despite the economic hardships imposed by the Coronavirus crisis on North Carolina consumers, the demand for real estate is booming. 

The Wall Street Journal published a trend yesterday indicating that mortgage applications for purchase a home have achieved levels equal to last year.

According to redfin.com, home buying demand is 16.5% higher now than it was pre-COVID-19 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Redfin attributes this explosive growth in real estate shoppers to two factors, including record-low mortgage rates. The other primary driver is a migration trend from expensive metropolitan areas as buyers hunt for more space at lower prices.

To capture a larger share of the robust market, local real estate agents need to stand apart from the millions of Google results.  Advertising on Fayetteville radio will help accomplish this.  Here's why.

Facebook usage has swelled since the onset of the Covid-19. 

According to Nielsen, before the current chaos, 62% of Fayetteville area adults used Facebook each month. This was significantly fewer than were reached by local radio or television each week.

According to the New York Times, however, since the start of the Coronavirus, daily Facebook traffic has increased by 27%. This compares to 33% growth in the amount of time consumers spend listening to local radio during a similar period.

Based on the surge in Facebook consumption, North Carolina small business owners might be tempted to purchase advertising on the social media platform to augment their regular, free postings. Here are are few facts these businesses should consider before investing.

Every week, 288,946 adult consumers tune-in to a Fayetteville radio station. That is way more than are reached by other media, including local television, newspaper, social media, or streaming audio sites like Pandora and Spotify.

A more significant number for thousands of North Carolina small business owners who advertise on Fayetteville radio is how many of these listeners stick around when their commercials come on.

A 2011 Nielsen study discovered that, on average, 93% of listeners stayed with the radio station they are tuned-to when the commercials come on. That number amazed many advertisers at the time who believed that audiences were far more likely to defect when the music stopped.

A lot has changed since 2011. Fayetteville consumers have many more media options and can instantly connect to each  with a button-push, mouse-click, screen-tap, or voice command. With all of these choices, do radio audiences still stay tuned during commercial breaks?

The chaos created in Fayetteville by the onset of Coronavirus has been a disruptive force among consumers. 

Work routines, buying habits, family life, and media consumption have all been palpably affected. These are all factors that need to be considered by small business owners who continue to advertise their goods and services during the crisis.

Before the current chaos, advertising on Fayetteville, by any metric, was the best way a local small business could advertise.

For instance, pre-Coronavirus, 2.1 million adult consumers tuned-in to a Fayetteville radio station every week. This is significantly more than watched local TV, read a newspaper, accessed social media, or streamed audio from sites like Pandora and Spotify.

New research released from Nielsen indicates that amidst the current crisis, listening to local radio remains little changed. This is great news for those North Carolina small business owners who are depending on advertising for their long-term survival.