Monday, February 2, 2009

Shoestring Advertising

By John Anghelache

Tough economic times are forcing people to keep their money in their wallets.

Which means business owners will have a harder time attracting new customers cost-effectively. As consumers spend less the cost of acquiring a customer will increase. Therefore, you need to start using some simple low cost promotions strategies right away.

Here are three of those strategies

Advertise in the most responsive media. Does direct mail, Google Adwords or billboards bring in lots of traffic to your store or website at the lowest cost? And do those people convert into customers? If so, focus more of your effort on that specific medium.

Bottom line: Put your money in advertising and marketing that is making you as much or more than your investment. And cut out the others that don't at least break even.

Pinpoint the products and services customers want to purchase. Place a greater emphasis on what the customer is willing to buy. Don't assume you know. Look at actual records of what you sell and let the numbers tell you what is selling. You might be surprised.

And while you're at it, find out what problems your market is agonizing over and figure out how to solve the ones you can. Mark my words, right now the businesses that will make it will be providing... solutions to problems!

Look for alternative distribution channels for your advertising messages. Conventional media sources are expensive. A good idea is to find non-competitive but complimentary businesses you can do endorsed/reciprocal advertising with.

You mail their list and they mail yours. Test both email and snail mail.

The worst thing you can do is stop advertising and marketing. Don't do it. Instead find lower cost sources and keep the ones that bring in at least a "one to one". Meaning for every dollar you spend a dollar comes back. It's okay to buy customers at a break even because over time they will make you money.

Finally, if you have an online presence and you collect emails beef up your email marketing system.

This is a must. No question about it.

This is the time to go for it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that good ad copy goes a long way. In fact, nothing happens until the sales message is written. So put more effort into creating better ad copy.

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