Deciding where to spend my advertising dollars used to be so simple.  Print or more print? In fact, back in the day (sometime around the Cretaceous period),  I worked with three national print publications and called it a day.  My phone rang off the hook.  I was living in La-La land and didn’t even know it.

Now, thanks to the explosive growth of the internet, there’s a blog/website/twitter/facebook option for every fetish and an advertising campaign to match.  I don’t have the latest figures, but one statistic I happened upon recently quoted the number of blogs on the internet at 112 million.  And that figure was from 2007! I haven’t even bothered to look up websites, but my guess is I couldn’t count that high anyway. How do you pick from all the possible sources and find an advertising solution that gives you a good bang for your rapidly weakening buck?  Honestly?  I don’t really know.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to participate in a fabulous Search Engine Webinar hosted by The Momentrepreneur Support Group.  I learned how to dissect my Analytics report (something my generationally-challenged brain should have internalized some time ago) and discovered that visitors from my site are overwhelmingly coming to us through organic Google searches (vs those organizations to whom I shell out ornate sums of money), and another big chunk are coming to us because kindly sites refer them (i.e. consumerreports.org, germfreaksguide.com, thegiggleguide.com, etc.).  In fact,  only a very small percentage of visitors to my site (4%) are actually biting on the paid-search fruit.

If 75% of visitors are coming to our site from online searches and referring sites, what does that mean for my print campaigns?

Does that mean my print ads are a waste of my already devalued dollar?  Or did my customers read the ads, forget the cleanshopper.com URL and search for Clean Shopper shopping cart covers under our keywords? Apparently, there’s an “app” for figuring that out somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet.

Through a nifty tracking mechanism we installed on the site, we can occassionally track how successful our print ads are, but the stars have to be aligned and it can’t snow.  Tough in those winter months. So far, we have found a mixture of five trade and consumer print publications that appear to work for us, but not nearly the way those organic searches or referrals do.

The print publications that have found a way to increase their viability stand out.  They incorporate FREE links, website banners and other cyber bribes that extend the life of our print ads and give our campaigns longer legs.  And who wouldn’t like longer legs?

Taking those five print publications and adding them to the list of over 112 million blogs and countless websites may not make me more cyber-ad savvy than T-Rex, but I’m at least learning how to find my way back to La-La land.

In addition to our fabulous new eco-friendly packaging, we’re launching new prints  in our popular Chic line of Clean Shopper shopping cart covers and Clean Diner highchair covers!  All with reusable, matching drawstring totes.  We’ll be showing off our new Loop D Loop (above) print and our must-have Black & White Circles (below) at the September ABC show, so you can buy everything in time for the holidays!  You’ll want to scoop up Clean Shoppers, Clean Diners and matching bibs for all the families on your list!  All available to ship after November 15th!

Chic Bib in Black & White Circles

Visit our website for closeouts and bargains as we make room for our fabulous new Chic prints!

Reusable Drawstring Tote in Black & White Circles

We are proud to announce that all Babe Ease adorable baby accessories, including the original Clean Shopper shopping cart cover, Clean Diner high chair cover, Clean Burper burp cloths, My Traveling ABCs, and more surpass CPSIA H.R. 4040 Title 1 Section 101 for Total Lead in Substrates, and U.S. CFR Title 16 Part 1303 for Total Lead Content. Additionally, My Traveling ABCs also passes ASTM F963 for toy safety!

We are delighted to confirm that none of our Babe Ease, LLC, products contain lead.

Of course, not all of the CPSIA requirements pertain to Babe Ease products.  Phthalates, for example, are not found in any Babe Ease item as we do not produce plastic items such as bottles, utensils, cups,  or other products that facilitate feeding and teething.

So please, shop with your mind at ease, and scoop up loads of safe, fun, and functional Clean Shopper shopping cart covers today!  And during the month of July receive FREE shipping with every order over $40!