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Advertise your Business
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In order for your business to be successful people
have to know about it. How do you get people to know about it?
You advertise it. The more you advertise your business, the
more customers you will get and the more money you will make.
So, it's in your interest to advertise it as much as you can
Not all advertising requires money. The best
advertising in the world is word of mouth which is free and
effective. If you provide an excellent product or service, your
customers will talk about it and recommend it to their friends.
Similarly, if your product or service isn't that great, they will also
talk - not the kind of advertising you want. The key is to make sure
your product or service is as good as you can possibly make it. Once
it's as good as you can make it, make it even better.
The question though is how do you get customers in the
first place? There are three ways:
Regardless of what kind of advertising you do, the
key is to make sure it's targeted to the right audience. For
example, if you are selling cookbooks, you aren't going to advertise
in a magazine targeted to auto mechanics. If you don't target
to people who are interested in your product then you are just
wasting your time and money. Before you do
any advertising, know who your target audience is. Who is
most likely to buy your product? Don't target who will most likely
use your product unless that person also is the buyer. For
example, engagement ring ads are usually targeted to men, even though
women wear them. Target your ads accordingly. This means
advertise where they are most likely to see your ad.
Traditional Advertising
Methods
- Word of Mouth. This is the BEST form
of advertising. It's easy and free. Tell everyone you know
and everyone you meet about your business. Hand out business
cards. People are more likely to buy from someone they know or
someone a friend knows instead of just some random person they've
never met.
- Advertise in Magazines - only do this if you
have a product SPECIFICALLY targeted to the magazine audience.
DO NOT
put your ad in a general magazine. It is usually a waste of
money. Most magazines will tell you that your ad needs to run at
least 3-6 times to be effective. I usually order for 2 months.
That way if the ad doesn't do well, I don't run it again. If it
does well during month one I can extend it.
Advertise in Newspapers - this is usually
not very effective so I don't recommend it. You have to run it
almost continuously to see an impact so the cost is usually
prohibitive. How often do you read the classifieds? How
often have you called someone from a regular ad you've seen in the
paper?
Mail Letters to Potential Customers - if you
have a service business such as consulting, web design, etc. I
recommend that you send out out at least 25 letters a week. You
should get some business from it. Always address it to a person,
don't send out a form mail.
Other
Offline Advertising Methods That Work
There are other ways of advertising that can be just as effective for
work at home businesses. These may not be right for your
business. It will depend on what type of business you have
whether these are good for you.
- Car Stickers - these are stickers you can put in your rear
window that advertises your product and/or domain name as you drive
around. For
example,
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Gift Baskets for All Occasions |
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www.GiftBaskets.com |
The best and cheapest place I know to get these is webdecals.
They do good work (see? an example of word of mouth in action.
:-)
- Offer your Product on Consignment to a Local Shop Owner -
this is also a great way of getting business. Are there shops in
your town that may be interested in selling your product? Approach
the store owner or manager and see if he or she would be interested in
offering your product on consignment. That means if it sells, they
get a percentage.
Most store owners will also let you put your business cards near
your item. A friend of mine got her homemade soaps into
several stores this way. If you do this make SURE to present
your product in the best possible way. Make it easy for the
store owner to sell your product. When the item sells the
store owner will probably request more.
- Flyers - this is cheap advertising. You make
up a flyer on your computer, take it to the copy store and get a
bunch printed on colored paper, then pass them out, post them up,
put them on people's windshields, or put them in people's doors.
You can pay kids to do this too.
- Business Cards
- these are not only great to have when you meet people, you can also
put these up on bulletin boards around your town.
Online Advertising
- Search Engine Listings - these are
free and if you get ranked in the top 10 of a popular keyword
you can do really, really well. Other people also want in
the top spots so it's competitive. There are a lot of
companies that offer search engine optimization services, that
is they will help you try to get the top spots. Of course
this costs money. A lot of these are total scams.
If someone guarantees you a certain ranking -
run! There is no way anyone can guarantee you a listing.
There are ways you can optimize your site
yourself. There is a tool called
Traffic Blazer that is pretty good. It analyzes
your web page and tells you what your site is currently
optimized for and how you can optimize it better. It will
also submit your site to a lot of search engines for you
(Google, AOL, MSN, etc.) It costs $39.95.
- Pay per Click Advertising - this is
the easiest way to advertise on the internet. You pay
money every time someone clicks through the ad to your
website. This way you know the people are interested in
your product or service before they click. Thus, your
ads are targeted and you have a better chance of converting
those visitors into paying customers.
The two most popular pay per click programs (and
the only ones I use) are:
Google AdWords
- these ads appear on Google and AOL. You decide the
search phrase(s) you want to target and how much you want to
spend on each click. The screen will tell you where
you rank for those keyword phrases with that price. If
you don't rank in the first 6 with the price then try other
keywords and phrases. The nice thing about Google is
you can set your daily budget.
Overture - these
ads appear in Yahoo and MSN. You have to spend at
least $20/month with them or they charge you that much.
Also, be careful with Overture and don't put a lot of money
in at once because if you choose a popular keyword you can
blow through a lot of money in a hurry. When I was
first starting out I bid on a popular keyword and spent over
$100 in one day! Not a good feeling. You have to
monitor these more closely than google.
"Opportunities" to Avoid
While these may not be scams in the legal sense of
the word, I think they are a complete waste of money.
- Email Lists - these places will
offer to sell you lists of people's email addresses.
They tell you that the people want the information and
signed up just so that they could get an offer like the
one you have. Uh, yeah, right. You know all
that spam you get in your inbox? It comes from email
lists just like these. If you spam, your web host
will delete your account and you could be fined.
- Submit your Site to 1,000 Search
Engines and Directories - this is a waste too.
There are only about 10 search engine directories that get
any traffic. If you want to submit to those use the
Traffic Blazer service I mentioned above.
These submit to a gazillion directories and search engine
offers will just bring you an empty wallet and more spam.
Avoid them.
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