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.
The scare factor of course is that if you don't get the word out about what you are selling, you are pretty much doomed to failure. You can only imagine how many great inventions are sitting in people's basements because it wasn't marketed right. We see businesses go down each and every day and you have to wonder was it bad business or lack of 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.
The next area you are going to use on the net is to get some pages going on social networks. If you check them out, Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo are not just for people making googoo eyes at each other. Most of these sites also offer some type of classified ad but you would really rather go the route of developing your own page or pages that will catch the attention of perspective buyers. Take some time to explore these sites and you will get the general idea.
The last thing you are going to do is to start your own website. If you don't have the money to have someone develop it for you, you can start by using a blog. It will serve the same purpose initially and that purpose it to generate hits. People search for stuff all the time on the web and you just never know when your site will pop up.
Once you get your blog or site operational, you are going to want to cross advertise with other people. The best way to do this is to make friends with forum owners and other bloggers. You put their link on your site and they will do the same in return. Again, more people are being exposed to your business and that would not normally know anything about it.
You can use the same principle off of the net and do it with local businesses in your community. Go talk to your local merchants and work out deals to advertise each others businesses for free amongst yourself. People that buy hardware have to eat and vice versa. There is nothing wrong with a flyer by the register in either establishment promoting each other. You will be surprised at the amount of extra traffic your store sees by doing something as simple as that.
The scare factor of course is that if you don't get the word out about what you are selling, you are pretty much doomed to failure. You can only imagine how many great inventions are sitting in people's basements because it wasn't marketed right. We see businesses go down each and every day and you have to wonder was it bad business or lack of 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.
The next area you are going to use on the net is to get some pages going on social networks. If you check them out, Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo are not just for people making googoo eyes at each other. Most of these sites also offer some type of classified ad but you would really rather go the route of developing your own page or pages that will catch the attention of perspective buyers. Take some time to explore these sites and you will get the general idea.
The last thing you are going to do is to start your own website. If you don't have the money to have someone develop it for you, you can start by using a blog. It will serve the same purpose initially and that purpose it to generate hits. People search for stuff all the time on the web and you just never know when your site will pop up.
Once you get your blog or site operational, you are going to want to cross advertise with other people. The best way to do this is to make friends with forum owners and other bloggers. You put their link on your site and they will do the same in return. Again, more people are being exposed to your business and that would not normally know anything about it.
You can use the same principle off of the net and do it with local businesses in your community. Go talk to your local merchants and work out deals to advertise each others businesses for free amongst yourself. People that buy hardware have to eat and vice versa. There is nothing wrong with a flyer by the register in either establishment promoting each other. You will be surprised at the amount of extra traffic your store sees by doing something as simple as that.
About the Author:
Alex Wu loves numbers and marketing. He operates a free advertising website that combines social networking with business marketing in this free ads network.
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