Is Best Buy falling into the Trade Show Trap?

Is this the beginning of the end?

Or just a temporary trend?

Best Buy has stopped advertising in my local paper.

Have you noticed this?

How about in your local paper?

Below is a picture of this week’s print advertisers in the Seattle Times. I’m happy to see local businesses represented and businesses that may be based in other areas representing themselves here.

The Question is … Do these print adverts impact behavior?

For me the answer is yes. How about you? Your family? Your business?
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Is this a sign of Good Times or Bad Times?

1. Could Best Buy be doing so well that they don’t need to advertise?
2. Could Best Buy be cutting back and (print) advertising was a casualty?
3. Could there be other underlying factors?

Big Data to the Rescue?

Big Data may be providing the information Best Buy is using to make this decision. I’d be curious to know if that is the actual cause or if it is because of points 1 or 2 above. I don’t expect Best Buy to answer this for a few reasons. Not the least of which is that it’s none of my business.

However, I suspect Big Data is a factor. At least it should be.

Most of the people I work with are in the tech industry in one way or another. They have unique points of view of how tech is used to drive business activities. I’d like to see what they have to say about this

The Trade Show Trap

This is something I have observed over the years. It has been especially noted and obvious at many of the Microsoft events I have attended in the past 20 years.

It’s simple:

If you are at the trade show you are ignored for your presence.

If you aren't at the show you are noted for your absence.

This is not a slight against Microsoft. I have seen it at IBM, SAP and other events. It’s just a fact of life. Your presence is noted.

This same mentality drove me to notice that Best Buy is absent in my local paper.

All Business Is Local

Even with the rise of online sellers I still say all business is local. Will this change over time. Absolutely. Can we and will we price shop online? Absolutely. But, we do have a choice on where we buy.

I’m happy to see AND support local businesses that support local businesses. Which is why you see me talking, posting and shooting videos about local businesses quite often.

As noted above I’m happy to see a lot of local business and some business that may not have their headquarters here, but they have a presence here are still advertising. Perhaps this is a dying art and I may be one of the few that notices advert inserts.

What about you?

What are you seeing in your local papers?

Are print ads a waste of time and money?

Perhaps someone reading this will have the (big) data to back up a position … one way or the other. I’d like to see the data supporting the cause for print advertisement. It would be interesting to see a comparison to web advertisement.

• What do you say?
• What do you see?
• Do print adverts impact your buying behavior?

Share your thoughts here and let’s get a dialogue going.

Image Credit: Seattle Times advertisers

Jeff is business advisor, mentor and community engagement expert. He has spent most of his career in the Enterprise Content Management industry. He brings over 20 years of Channel Sales, Partner Marketing and Alliance expertise to audiences around the world in speaking engagements and via his writing. He has worked for Microsoft, Kodak, and K2.

Tweet him @jshuey or connect on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google+ He is active in the Microsoft Partner Community and is the co-founder and President of the IAMCP Seattle chapter.

He is a contributing author to Entrepreneur, Elite Daily, Yahoo, US News and to the Personal Branding Blog