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Are you a small business owner and looking for expanding your business?
But how?
To reach the level you want, you will first have to accomplish the expanding of your business. Yes, we agree that you have to advertise to a large extent and hence your marketing strategies need to be locally-focused because being the local and small business you need to target to capture all of the local customers.
When it comes to advertisement, today’s entrepreneurs have an added advantage as there are various advertising ideas available; from newspaper to television, from print media to social media, from low budget to expensive budget.
In-expensive Advertising Ideas for Small Businesses
Before we take you through the ideas you could apply to advertise your business, let us take you through some strategies that you can consider to have an effective advertisement. Because when it comes to reaching your business goals, you need to have a smart approach to your advertisement.
If you know the marketing world, you would know that it is constantly evolving and hence what worked earlier would not show that great results now and hence you may need to incorporate a marketing mix of ideas to actually find what works for your small business.
Determine Your Goals – The initial step when you plan to promote your business by advertising is for you to outline your goals so that you can easily find the best way to achieve them. Decide concretely what are your end goals and layout a plan accordingly.
Find Your Target Audience – When you know your goals, the next thing for you is to define your audience, for that start with forming the profile of your potential target audience. As you define the customers’ profile, consider the deeper attributes of gender, age, location and income. This would definitely help you to create an effective advertisement.
Consider How Your Brand Is Viewed – Branding your business is always a major part in the marketing world and hence view your business’s branding from an unbiased perspective because you need to establish your business as being an authority in your area. Consider each and every aspect of branding like your logo, tagline, corporate colours, etc.
Test and Track Your Ad Campaigns – In the marketing world, it’s a must for you to always test and track your ad campaigns. When you track and analyse the effective results of your ad campaign, and if the progress is quite positive, you would then have to work on promoting it harder. Of your ad campaign actually shows negative results you can opt-out of it and create a new one.
Consider Your Timing – It’s a fast-moving world and hence you need to consider the right timings when your target audience most likely sees the ad. Also consider your relevant community, your competition and any other factors that could affect your audience to divert and then plan accordingly when it is best for you to advertise your business.
Seek Out Help – Sometimes it becomes impossible for you to handle everything on your own in small business and also it is possible that you are not skilled enough to plan your own advertising and hence seek help from the experts so create a quality and effective advertising content.
Try Low-Cost Advertising Options – When it comes to advertisement, you don’t have to necessarily have a big budget, but you can use the low budget techniques to advertise your business.
Here are some of the low budget advertising techniques:
- Business cards
- Hosting events
- Customer loyalty programs
- Trade shows and other networking events
- Speaking engagements
- Community events
- Customer referrals
- Online reviews
- Social media engagement
- Flyers
- Mailers
We know that advertising is not an easy task and it takes time to be an advertising expert but when you know what technique works for your business, continue on the same path.
Some of the Best form of advertising ideas for your small business:
Claim, Verify and Create Local Listings
As you already know that internet is the one place that people search first for when they need to find a local business that sells the products or services they need, so why not go for local listings?
Local listings are great when to advertise your small business and hence make sure that you have a complete listing of all the local online directories so that the internet can suggest your products and services when someone searches for the same in your location.
Get Free Advertising with Google My Business
You must be already aware of that your Google My Business profile actually serves to give the small local businesses free advertising on Google in many ways. By using Google My Business, your business appears on Google Maps, Google Search and Google’s Knowledge Panel and it also allows you to collect Google reviews which is the most effective organic advertising.
You can, also post promotions, events, news products and services to your profile so that the people know what your business is all about.
Run a Referral Promotion
When you give your present customers some offers and incentives, you would definitely be referred to their family and friends. Referring and recommendations is one of the most powerful forms of advertising and hence use that for your business’s advantage and get more customers.
Make Use of the Local Newspaper
If you already don’t remember let us remind you that the local newspapers actually provides you with many advertising opportunities. You can ask them to place any advertisement or get you listed on the classified section.
Distribute Print Media
Being a local business you can distribute your flyers, brochures, pamphlets, business cards and other kinds of stuff in your local vicinity. If possible add your print media on to the local community notice boards.
Host a Local Event
If you have enough resources you can host a local event. It can be pretty much anything you want it to be, like a festival, workshop, charity event, anniversary sale, party, demo contest, gaming challenge, or other events.
Send Direct Post
By post we mean sending printed advertisements to all the potential customers so that they are aware of your business. And when you send them a direct post, it would increase the chances of them to come and take your products and services.
Try Paid Local Ads
As it would advantage you to the greatest extent as they are placed at prominent and noticeable places on billboards, web pages and search result pages. Further, when you plan to create your ad, focus your efforts on your local area, your target audience and most importantly on gaining credibility for your business.
Create a Magazine Ad
As it offers a great format for businesses that put a heavy emphasis on visuals. Trade magazines are valuable for businesses that cater to niche followings or specific industries.
Get Radio Stations to Broadcast Live from Your Business
As people tend to listen to radio shows from time to time and they mostly prefer the local news channel of their location. So take advantage of that situation and ask the local radio station to broadcast live from your business so that they can even talk about the products and services you provide as well as interview some of your happy customers.
Set up your business profile or page on social media sites
Such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. because that would help you to connect with your local population easily. Make sure that your business profile includes a good description, keywords and a link to your website.
Further, look for groups or conversations that talk about your type of business and participate in the conversations carefully to promote your business.
Create Local TV Ads
As the TV commercials often offer another traditional ad format with targeting the local news stations or cable TV and show your ad to your potential audience.
Advertise at Local Movie Theatres
As we know that when people go for a movie, they practically pay attention to all advertisement playing before the movie begins and in the intermission, so use that for your business and advertise your business during such advertising session.
Sponsor an Online Contest or Giveaway
When you use the online publication to advertise your business, think of attracting customers by sponsoring some online contests and giveaways because an online contest would definitely let your audience see your business.
Trade Website Space with Other Small Businesses
So that both the business gets to expand more as the customer base for every business differs. That would help you to gain excess to the customers of the other business.
Work with Local Influencers on a Campaign
Working with the local influencers that are relevant to your target market would help you to spread the word about your business. Further, ask the influencers with a more following to share their experience with your product and speak about your business.
Use Human Billboards
When you wish to call attention to your business from every street corner, hire a human billboard or a sign spinner service. That would definitely attract more attention when the human billboard would interact with potential audience about your products. But before considering this option, remember to check the local ordinances to see what is permissible.
Post Interesting Information and Pictures regularly to your social media accounts
As that helps your audience to reach you easily. If you post something knowledge and interesting, your audience will interact with your post and so you can further make them your potential customers.
Ask Customers to Review Your Business
When you have already happy customers, as them to review you via a comment on your posts that would help you to attract others because when someone chooses a product or a service provider, they want to be assured that they are making a good choice and that can be made sure by having the review from your best customers.
Ask Family and Friends to Promote
What can be a better way than letting your close one promote it? Ask your family and friends to promote your business with their peers, that way you would get more customers. Additionally, you can give them discounts and offers for the referral they pass you.
Conclusion:
These were just some effective advertising for your small business as if you look around you, there is no shortage of advertising strategies that you can be used to advertise your business. But the strategies discussed in this article are the best for a small business that is trying to expand and have a limited budget.
Make sure that before you choose a particular strategy, you have pre-defined your advertising goals, advertising budget and thus also have a creative brand image. The strategy you would apply would be consistently used to target your audience and ultimately get success to your business.Don’t go for a concrete strategy as with the changing market scenario you would need to be flexible enough to change your marketing techniques too.
Further, remember that if you want your advertising campaigns to be effective, you need to constantly analyse the results of your efforts and keep optimizing to maximize your results, so that the more you advertise, the more exposure your business gets and the higher the quality of your efforts, the more sales you get.