Paul Price

Imagine a big jar filled with Skittles.  The Skittles are randomly distributed throughout the jar; a jumbled mishmash of red, green, yellow, purple and orange. The jar is on a machine that shakes it vigorously.  Now, imagine that this shaking action is captured on a video and played in reverse. There is no way that you can tell the video is being played in reverse.   When the video is played backward, the candies bounce just as they would when played forward.  You have no way to know if the video is playing forward or in reverse.

Now, record a new video in your mind.  This time, start with a jar where the Skittles are arranged in colored layers.  Moving from the bottom to the top, you have red, green, yellow, purple and finally a orange layer.  As the machine shakes the jar, the candies bounce and collide until they are again randomly distributed. 

In this video, you can easily distinguish a forward playing recording from one that plays in reverse.  This experiment illustrates the effect of entropy known as the arrow of time.  The basic principle of this model is that without the help of an external exertion of energy, a system tends to become less ordered over time.  Interestingly, this is the only physical property that seems to define the flow of time from past to future.

I got to thinking about this principle as I was mowing, weeding and maintaining my yard yesterday afternoon.  Everything in life follows this principle: yards, cars, homes, computer systems, roads and even business strategies including your local advertising strategy. It will slowly fall apart and become less effective over time if you don't continually test, measure and refine it.  For example, if local internet marketing was not a part of your strategy a few years ago, it may not have hurt your sales.  But, today, if you aren't investing in local internet marketing, then you are almost certainly losing opportunities.

Even if you are executing a successful local pay-per-click campaign today, it is almost guaranteed to be less successful in the future if you don't continually test, measure and refine your approach.  The same goes for all other mediums, strategies, tactics and local marketing ideas.  You have to stay up-to-date on the new tools and techniques or your competitors who do keep up will leave you behind.

As a national brand, local affiliate, reseller or independent small business owner, you have a lot to worry about, and probably don't have time to get into the nuts and bolts of fighting local advertising entropy.  That is where Balihoo comes in. We do that work for you; from ad builder software to email campaign automation, microsites and local media buying.  Click here to take a look at some of our whitepapers and case studies.  If you are a franchisee or product reseller, then direct your national brands to Balihoo, so that we can help them and you to get your skittles (aka: local store marketing strategy) to look more like this: