Small Business Budget Advertisements
- Thread starter MrMessi
- Start date
Difficult to answer. It depends on the business.
First determine who your target market is. Male, female, age, income etc.
Then determine the genre of advertising (print, radio, internet, phone solicitation etc.) best suited for your business and market.
Then decide what part of the genre is best suited. For example... if you decide you want to do a print ad(s), does it go into yellow pages, newspaper, specialty publications, flyers etc.?
Then decide on the finer details. For example, let's say you decide on a particular print publication, you then need to be specific regarding where in the publication. For example, if you decide on a print ad in the newspaper, does the ad go into the sports section, entertainment section etc.?
Each type of advertising will give a specific hit ratio depending on your type of business, type of advertising, number of ads etc.
The trick is to determine the best bang for your buck. No one on here is going to give you a good answer unless they already have experience with promoting your particular type of business.
You need to do lots of research or you will likely waste your money.
Good luck.
I am thinking if you do it in house then a contest or give away. Free publicity from the media like radio talk show interviews. Interviews with smaller free newspapers for the local marcket or even interviews with the larger papers.
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I can't believe no one has asked what type of business he is attempting to market before they offer all this advice? Selling t-shirts in the beaches is a heck of a lot different then selling Life Insurance.
The fact that he has asked "how do I generate sales" makes me a little nervous in the first place.
Times are tough out there, but I do admire and support small business owners.
I can't believe no one has asked what type of business he is attempting to market before they offer all this advice? Selling t-shirts in the beaches is a heck of a lot different then selling Life Insurance.
The fact that he has asked "how do I generate sales" makes me a little nervous in the first place.
Times are tough out there, but I do admire and support small business owners.
There is only one post giving advice on type of advertising. What 'all this advice' are you referring to?
Perhaps a poor choice of words on my part, you're right, there was only one post on the type of adverstising.
I still stand behind the "bases" of my original post though, how does one offer marketing advice without knowing the nature of the business?
I know he has now indicated he'd like to open an optical store.
Retail is not easy, frankly it's something that I would avoid, but that's my opinion. I admire anyone ambitious enough to take it on, and as mentioned in my first post, I always like to support local, independants.
Your best way is Yellow Pages, and phone book, will cost you not to much, but will get you out there..
I assume this is as an independent, not part of a franchise. Having a location is part of it - what is it near - seniors residences, schools government buildings, the subway etc.
To answer your question - find out about the local market, customize your offerings to them to entice them in and provide some incentive to come to your store (in optical, this could be a referral/family program, free eye-tests (probably most already do this?), discount if an employee/member of xyz etc. Get your customers to advertise for you is a key!
This is what I did (many years ago)...
One trick I learned was to be at the site for an extended period to determine the traffic going past and the type of people. I mean days at a time at different times and weekends etc. (I was purchasing a health food store).
In the end when interviewing the owner about his marketing it flabbergasted me that he had not approached a tennis club (within 600 m of the store) or the YMCA (about a km away across a railway line) about discounts for their members to buy at the store - I went across to each location and asked members coming and going if they would shop at the store if they got a discount, what products they would want and hours of operation etc.
In the end I bought the store, opened at 6am for the summer tennis crowd and early workout folks and served healthy juices and breakfast items (which were not there prior) along with fresh specialty bread from a supplier.
Also beefed up the stocks and brands for serious body builders etc.
Also tried to negotiate having a healthy vending machine at the railway station but this got tied up in government bureaucracy with contracts etc (I did install one at the tennis club).
Business increased 245 % in 6 months and 35 % of my profit came from the tennis and YMCA crowd - which did not exist prior. Sold for double what I paid 18 months later and paid myself a decent wage at the time ($50k per year and this was 20 years ago) - but I also worked my butt off as I didn't pay much for labour by doing a lot of shifts myself with my fiance.
