World Business Service

Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’

Advertising really just boils down to telling a story in order to convey a message about your business, products, or services. Advertising “stories” can be told with words, sounds, videos, or even simply using images.

In the world of advertising creativity does count, but being clear about your message is even more important than being the most clever and unique company out there on the map. In fact, advertising that is too off the beaten path can be an expensive mistake. Think of whimsy ads as the house with all its interior walls painted pink — it has little mass appeal making it harder to find the right buyer and close a deal.

If you do not have the budget to hire someone to help with an advertising campaign, rely on your own strengths.

If you have strong writing skills, start with a flyer or brochure. If you have artistic ability, use more images and fewer words in your campaign. But no matter where you start, have someone else proofread your work before going to print.
Advertising Should Be Focused, Not All-Encompassing Attempts to Reach “Everybody”

There are many different types of consumer groups, so you cannot to reach everyone with a single ad campaign. Target a particular group (i.e., working mothers, homeowners in a particular area, pet owners, etc.) and address their specific interests. Providing broad, or too much information in ad campaigns, tends to turn customers off.

To create a successful ad:

• Keep ad campaigns small and simple;
• Choose a specific consumer group to target;
• Do not use ads to promote personal, religious, or political agendas unless that is your business’ mission;
• Choose a specific product, product line or service to promote;
• Offer coupons, discounts or incentives – everyone loves a bargain.

The basics of this small work at home enterprise are as follows:

1. Contact a few small merchants with repeat customers. Offer to build a simple web site to advertise their weekly specials or coupons. You’ll have to some research to come up with acceptable rates. You could design a site for $30 to $50 then negotiate a monthly amount for maintenance and charges for changes. Your rates would depend on how many changes would be required. I think a monthly maintenance amount is important because you will have to check a site often to ensure it is up and accessible. There are free stat counters available to check the number of hits a site receives.

2. You can save yourself time by scanning the advertising in local daily and weekly papers. Since the advertising rates in weekly or free advertising papers are the lowest, give them particular attention. If a business is advertising and does not include a web site, you have a prospect. The first thing any merchant will do is advertise his web site. Some good prospects are green grocers, cafes, drycleaners, beauty salons, delicatessens and fabric stores. Any small independent business with repeat customers is a potential prospect.

3. Offer to send out a newsletter to customers for an additional cost per submission. If the merchant wants to send out a newsletter occasionally to his customers, he should collect their email addresses.
4. The merchant should hand out a small ad or card to each customer directing them to his new web site, and he should also add his web site to any other media ads.

Your beginning costs for this enterprise are basically shoe leather and some printing of advertising materials. You’ll need business cards, rate cards and contract sheets outlining your services. You can use free web hosting, free programs, free banners, free graphics, and free templates to build your web sites.

A typical web site page might comprise a top banner with the merchants name, a table with the store location and phone, a secondary table with his rates for services, and a third table with his weekly specials or a coupon. The reason for using tables for each segment of your page is that they are easy to edit. Once your simple site is up, you can easily change the specials or coupons without much work. I recommend coupons on each site because any honored coupons would demonstrate the effectiveness of the site. If the merchant has a picture of his store, logo or letterhead, you can scan it and insert the image into a table on the web site.

Explain to the merchant that you can use free domain hosting and free domain names, but it always looks more professional for a business to have its own domain name and .com is the most recognized. However, one of the others might have a name more appropriate to the business. The costs for acquiring a domain are usually less than $10 with free hosting for a small site.