Advertising

So, you run a small business and you are asking yourself where can I best put my money to get the most bang for my advertising buck? Well, let’s discuss this for a moment shall we? Everyone realizes that online advertising is the best way to save money, but you cannot always reach all your customers that way. Of course you could add a blog to your website for your customers to communicate your latest offers, perhaps even have downloadable coupons?

You should also add your company to local Internet Directories, and do all the free ones first. Develop an email list and fax list and ask your customers permission to send them coupons and information on your latest specials. Flyers are most inexpensive form of advertising next to websites and the internet, but to effectively distribute flyers you need a plan, one which DOES NOT involve flyer’ing windshield wipers of cars in the parking lots in town.

What about print advertising? Well, newspapers are dead, but sometimes inserts will work if they do not get lost in the clutter, try to do an off day when other companies are not inserting their mini-catalogs and flyers. When distributing flyers you must blitz the areas in sequence. Try a zone offense strategy especially if you have a location based businesses or a local service business with a small trading area.

Also consider Community Based advertising with small nonprofit groups. Try advertising in local sports programs. Be specific to your target market and area where you draw your best customers. I believe if you do these few things you will outlast the recession and it will be over before you know it and you’ll still be on top.

If you start an online business, you know that one of your main goals is to serve the people your website or blog to see. But how do you do it? The chances are that you have a lot of money may not need to put in the ad from your blog or website and you want free advertising that really works and you get the best results. What you find is free targeted advertising.

Targeted advertising is advertising that attracts customersgenuinely interested in your product or service, rather than a whole lot of other website owners who are looking for your ad so you will see theirs. Three forms of free advertising that you can use in marketing your website is: forum marketing, article marketing, and e-mail groups.

Do a quick search on the internet forums and you will be linked to your website topic is and where you may be able to post helpful advice for others. If what you say appears to beuseful, people will learn more about you may be interested – so add a link to your website in the signature of your forum post. Forum marketing is targeted advertising, because people come to your website because they love you before they even there too, so you really can get quality traffic. A large number of these forums are free to join and therefore provide free advertising if you do not blatantly post SPAM. The critical line using forum marketing is to beuseful and post information related to the topic being discussed.

In a second form of free advertising for a website is article marketing. Give or get someone to write articles for you that you can put your name on. Again, the people who read your articles already know whether they are interested in the topic, and so will represent targeted advertising – if they like what you have to offer them your site and buy something that will be visited.

The thirdform of free targeted advertising is the use of e-mail groups like Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. This e-mail groups are focused on various subjects and you can those best suited for your product to find. Do not just go for general advertising groups. Try to look for groups who have something to do with your product or target market has. For example, if your site or blog selling pet-related products – pet-related e-groups to join that allows a message to them. Onceagain with this form of free advertising, you need to be relevant, so if the group is instead about a specific problem they were trying to helpful advice before promoting your product offers, not just sell, sell, to sell. As people build trust in you they will be more likely to buy your product, so focus on building the relationship first.

As you can see, with free targeted advertising your goal is to build relationships with people who might be interested inyour product – either through forums, articles or e-mail groups – and then to suggest (without being over-sold) how your product can help meet their needs. By following simple marketing rule you can exceptional results using only free ad.