Small Business Advertising
More Marketing Tips
You can have the most wonderfully designed small business website set up with the highest quality content and creative writing but it will mean absolutely nothing if no one ever hears about it! By now, you should not only have your comprehensive business plan written up but you should have a website up on the internet that is fully fleshed out with great content and design. Beyond this, you should have a loose-leaf notebook with the marketing strategies of all your major and minor competitors for reference and a plan of how you want to attack advertising challenges for your own product website.
Advertising has always been a pretty simple thing, especially before the advent of the internet. You would just take out an ad in the newspaper, laid out by square inches and pay for each inch you use! But since the internet has come and has changed the scope of marketing, businesses are being forced to adapt to the new technological advertising techniques. The controversy is between doing your marketing the old fashioned way and doing it the modern way. However, one thing refuses to change - good advertising means good business!
If you could use your product website to not only bring traffic onto your site (as you learned in the previous Section) but to increase your profits and gain customer loyalty, wouldn’t you do it? There are a variety of ways you can have an effective and efficient marketing plan that consists of segmented plans. Here are a few ways you can plan out your scheme:
Flyers and newspaper advertisements
Press releases
Having your own blog
Targeted emails
Banner advertisements
Pay-per-click advertising
Newsletter and/ or e-zine
Let’s take a little closer of a look at each of these marketing options:
Flyers and Newspaper Ads: This is about as old fashioned as you can possibly get when it comes to marketing in the year 2007! This is also one of the easiest ways of marketing that you can undertake. Here’s how you can start:
Design something simple but elegant for your particular products that you can use for a flyer and a newspaper ad. If you design it right you will be able to design it for duel purposes! These ads are more for your local business then your internet business but they can help either one. If you have a local store even better because you will be able to advertise what you are, where you are located and give a tangible address and phone number. If you are just an online product business you can still utilize your local market by including these things:
Your business name and logo (in large print, easily readable type)
Your website URL
A short description of the benefits that your company provides
What you are about and why, described very briefly
Your contact information (email address and phone number)
Once you are finished with your design work you should submit it to the proper outlets. Send it in to your local newspapers so that they run it by the square inch and drop your fliers off at relevant spots around town. If you are in a relatively large area it shouldn’t be hard to find the places where your product is needed and is a normal occurrence where people need equipment.
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