The Top 10 Small Business Advertising Ideas Part 1
Here’s a quick list of the top ten small
business advertising ideas for winning customers and building your business. These techniques will help you breathe a little
easier by helping you uncover the primary tools for building your customer base and
generating the income you want. If you’re looking for the best small business
advertising ideas for getting customers, this top ten list may be very helpful. It includes:
~ Directories ~ Newspapers
~ Magazines ~ Direct Marketing
~ Business Cards ~ Networking and Partnering
~ Vehicle Advertising ~ Cable TV
~ Internet, and ~ Trade Shows Of this list of the best small business advertising
ideas, not every one of these will be right for you. But it’s still worthwhile to understand
how they all fit together. First in the list of top small business advertising
ideas is Directory Advertising. Traditionally this has included the Yellow
Pages, but can also include regional and specialty directories, depending on your type of business. The Internet has all but killed the effectiveness
of the Yellow Pages in many regions. Still, if people in your community still use
the Yellow Pages, this can be ideal for certain types of businesses, particularly retail and
service businesses.
I know an exterminator who built his entire
hugely successful business on half-page ads in the Yellow Pages. Although it was pretty costly, as far as small
business advertising ideas go, this one was the essential tool for his building a multi-million
dollar business. But for most regions, the Internet has killed
the Yellow Pages. In its place, Google has elevated certain
directories to become essential marketing tools for many people and businesses. For manufacturers there’s The Thomas Register
of Manufacturers, and industry directories and buyers’ guides. Service companies have sites like ServiceMagic.com
and specialized ones, such as 1-800-Dentist, which can be a valuable source of new customers,
depending on your industry.
For local and regional businesses, there’s
also a rarely mentioned of the small business advertising ideas that can be highly effective. Many local and regional newspapers and directories
have online services that will get your business listed at the top of the search engines, typically
for about a hundred bucks a month. To identify the most effective of these directories,
go to Google, type in business types similar to yours, and see what comes up in the natural
non-paid listings. Then look at their web addresses. For the top listings, if it says something
like CitySearch or in my case, LosAngelesTimes or SuperPages, then these are the directories
that know how to get you listed in the top of the search engines.
If you pay them, they’ll generally get you
listed nice and high on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Bing. Second on our list of top small business advertising
ideas is Newspaper Advertising. Although not ideal for every business, if
you have something newsworthy, like a seminar you’re putting on, or coupons to draw people
to your product or location, newspaper could be ideal. Remember, newspapers are about giving readers
“news.” As the saying goes, Today’s News Wraps Tomorrow’s
Fish… meaning newspapers last just a single day. If they missed your ad, it’s gone.
For this reason, the most effective newspaper
advertising is repeated over days and weeks, rather than running just once on a single
day. If you cannot afford to run a campaign over
several days or several weeks, newspaper may not be ideal for you. One advantage of newspaper is its short cycle
time. You could literally have your ad appear in
tomorrow’s edition, if you want to get something out fast.
Number three in our list of top small business
advertising ideas is Magazine advertising. Magazines could be effective if you are trying
to reach people in a specific industry or region. Depending on the publication, magazine ads
can be costly, and may take one or two months before they appear. Still, magazine advertising could be crucial
for many businesses to create a steady flow of new customers. Direct marketing is another of the small business
marketing ideas that can be essential in winning customers, but also in finding distributors
and marketing partners. Direct marketing is a powerful way to let
people in a specific region or industry find out about your product or business. The most common methods are telemarketing
and direct mail. Many people do not consider hiring a telemarketer
to bring in hot leads, but professional telemarketing services and committed telemarketers could
be a highly effective way to open doors to hot buyers, for certain types of businesses.
Direct mail is certainly important for many
types of businesses. In searching for effective small business
marketing ideas, a photographer I worked with used direct mail to let people in high-income
regions of Los Angeles know about her service. By sending a beautiful mailing with exquisite
samples of her work, direct mail put her work right in the hands of her potential buyers,
in a way no other medium could reach these buyers.
If you use coupons to bring customers to your
product or location, direct mail, particularly bundled with weekly coupons from local supermarkets,
can be an effective and relatively low cost way to get your message into the hands of
your buyers. I’m not a big fan of online coupon services
like Groupon because they tend to attract people who only respond when there is a deep
discount. But distributing your own coupons through
these bulk services could be very effective for certain types of businesses, and could
cut your distribution cost by bundling yours with other advertisers. You can generally find the names of these
bulk distributors through your local library or printed on the bulk mailings you receive
in your home.
Next in our list of small business marketing
ideas is your Business Card, which can be an important marketing tool for many marketers. Make sure you have plenty of information on
it, perhaps using both sides. A Business Card can be like a mini brochure,
letting people know how to contact you, but also, why they should buy from you. Here’s a terrific example of a Business
Card that gives plenty of reasons why you should hire them, including 36 years in business
and a list of their certifications.
So that’s the first five. In the next video is part 2 where I’ll go
over numbers 6 to 10 of the top ten small business marketing ideas for growing your
business. If you found this tip helpful, subscribe to
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