Owners of small businesses need to think more creatively about their advertising strategies, simply because they tend to have much less money to spend than the big boys in the game.
Owners of small businesses need to think more creatively about their advertising strategies, simply because they tend to have much less money to spend than the big boys in the game. Although this could pose a problem, by thinking out of the box, small businesses can step up and compete with bigger-budget firms. Here are some simple tips for doing just that:
Small businesses need to think more creatively about their advertising strategies.Click To Tweet
Target the Right Audience
In order to run a successful advertising campaign, small businesses need to spend just the right amount of money in the right places. The best way to do this is by targeting only the people who are likely to be interested in the product or service that offers. For example, if your business is selling baby clothes, you would be much better off advertising on mummy blogs or in mother and baby magazines than you would targeting any and every stream you could find.
To ensure you are targeting the right people, you simply need to collect and analyze customer data, so that you can work out their target demographic.
Track and Measure Your Marketing
If you want to know whether or not your current advertising strategy is paying off, you need to track and measure each and every advertising stream you are using. Admittedly, this is much easier to do online because platforms like Facebook and Google AdWords offer online tracking stats, but it is possible to gauge whether offline advertising is working by implementing various strategies such as offering coupons, setting up email addresses or doing anything that will give customers an incentive to reveal where they heard about the company.
Tracking advertising is all well and good, but you also need to measure how successful it has been and be prepared to get rid of or tweak, advertising strategies that are just not working for you.
Create a Strong Brand Identity
If you can, it is worth spending a bit of money on creating a strong brand identity. If your brand is easily recognizable by the people in your target audience, and it is a brand that speaks to them, from the choice of color to the image on your logo, you will stand a much better chance of winning their business and keeping them onboard. Branding is powerful, and you can use it to your advantage with a bit of effort.
Make the best use of your resources
Whether you have access to digital signage media players where you can display your advertising, or you only have access to a marketing blog, make sure you put the effort in to use these resources and use them well. This might mean taking the time to create visually appealing menus and media for your digital signage player, or writing a new blog post each week, but, whatever it is, take the time to make it good, and continuously assess the effectiveness of the way you are using your resources to make them go as far as possible.
The bottom line is that you have to make the most of what you have, measure its effectiveness and make changes where necessary if you want your advertising strategy to succeed on a shoestring.
