How much should I spend on advertising? It is a question that every business owner asks themselves and struggles with. It is tough to track how much new business you get in most cases and therefore you don't know if you are just throwing away your money or putting it to good use.
Of course, the flip side of that is that if you don't get the word on the street about your business, you have absolutely no shot of ever succeeding. You know you have to advertise, it is just common sense. You watch TV every day and see every major company in your face every time a commercial comes on. If McDonald's is still advertising, you better! Problem is that you don't have their budget, how can you keep up with the times. The answer is FREE advertising!
The first way you are going to save money on advertising is by making use of all the free advertising that is available on the internet. There are many different avenues that you can take and you should be exploiting them all. Not one of them will cost you a penny out of your pocket and will require you to do nothing more than spend a few hours a week on your computer.
The first avenue on the net is to use free classified ads. There are literally hundreds of thousands of sites that you can post an ad on to sell your product or service. You are obviously not going to be able to put something up on all of them but you need to get to as many as possible that cater to your niche. A simple search engine inquiry will give you a very good idea of what sites are the best ones to go.
Social networks offer a unique opportunity for free advertising. They offer you two possibilities in developing your own page and usually also have their own classified sections. If you are not familiar with these networks, you may think that they are for hooking up and socializing, that is far from the truth. People spend hours on these sites reading about anything and everything. If you are selling wine and Jane Doe does a random search, she just may come across your site and you will have found some new business.
Finally, at least as far as the web goes, you are going to have your own dedicated site. If you have a limited budget, you should start out with a simple blog that you can talk about your business and make some daily posts about what you are selling. All of these sites are totally free so it will not cost you a penny and you will be competing with the people that have spend thousands on getting their site up an running.
Once you have your own site up you will also offer link exchanges with other bloggers and web sites. Do some searches in forums and blog sites and see who is popular. These sites don't necessarily have to be affiliated with what you are selling, actually for this, you would probably prefer that they were not. You are just trying to let people know about your business and this is a great way to do it.
That is something that will also work in your local business community, especially if you are in an area that is heavily populated with private businesses instead of the corporate bullies. A lot of times you will have one area that is saturated with all different types of shops. Most people will spend money on a mental trigger or impulse buy. If they are checking out at one store and then see a flyer for your store for something else they need, don't you think they will trust the judgement of the store owner that they are currently buying from. Again, business you probably would have never had for merely letting each other advertise in each others place of business. - 15478
Of course, the flip side of that is that if you don't get the word on the street about your business, you have absolutely no shot of ever succeeding. You know you have to advertise, it is just common sense. You watch TV every day and see every major company in your face every time a commercial comes on. If McDonald's is still advertising, you better! Problem is that you don't have their budget, how can you keep up with the times. The answer is FREE advertising!
The first way you are going to save money on advertising is by making use of all the free advertising that is available on the internet. There are many different avenues that you can take and you should be exploiting them all. Not one of them will cost you a penny out of your pocket and will require you to do nothing more than spend a few hours a week on your computer.
The first avenue on the net is to use free classified ads. There are literally hundreds of thousands of sites that you can post an ad on to sell your product or service. You are obviously not going to be able to put something up on all of them but you need to get to as many as possible that cater to your niche. A simple search engine inquiry will give you a very good idea of what sites are the best ones to go.
Social networks offer a unique opportunity for free advertising. They offer you two possibilities in developing your own page and usually also have their own classified sections. If you are not familiar with these networks, you may think that they are for hooking up and socializing, that is far from the truth. People spend hours on these sites reading about anything and everything. If you are selling wine and Jane Doe does a random search, she just may come across your site and you will have found some new business.
Finally, at least as far as the web goes, you are going to have your own dedicated site. If you have a limited budget, you should start out with a simple blog that you can talk about your business and make some daily posts about what you are selling. All of these sites are totally free so it will not cost you a penny and you will be competing with the people that have spend thousands on getting their site up an running.
Once you have your own site up you will also offer link exchanges with other bloggers and web sites. Do some searches in forums and blog sites and see who is popular. These sites don't necessarily have to be affiliated with what you are selling, actually for this, you would probably prefer that they were not. You are just trying to let people know about your business and this is a great way to do it.
That is something that will also work in your local business community, especially if you are in an area that is heavily populated with private businesses instead of the corporate bullies. A lot of times you will have one area that is saturated with all different types of shops. Most people will spend money on a mental trigger or impulse buy. If they are checking out at one store and then see a flyer for your store for something else they need, don't you think they will trust the judgement of the store owner that they are currently buying from. Again, business you probably would have never had for merely letting each other advertise in each others place of business. - 15478
About the Author:
Alex Wu is fascinated by numbers and trading in marketplace. He wants to build a free advertising site that leverages the power of social network to facilitate business hiring in his free ads website.
