Advertising basics

Smallbusiness.com Manual: Advertising Basics is a collaborative project created by users of Smallbusiness.com. You can find more Smallbusiness.com Manuals here.

Contents

Overview

When you start a small business, your main competitors are those with the same products or services in your market. In order to attract customers you will have to promote and advertise your site. Even if the quality of the product or service you offer is the best, it will not gain attention from the customers on its own. Without advertisement, there will be no sales and no revenue.

1. Break the Budget Barrier

Small businesses are often limited by advertisement budgets. However, you can find advertisements that are both inexpensive and available to your choice and needs. The goal is to get the attention of the public. Recently, businesses have transfered to digitalization. You can create a domain with an attractive dot.com and file your site to free web directories. This can add great value to the products and services you are offering.

2. Shared Advertising

One effective method for advertising small businesses on the Internet is Shared advertising. Here you need to find others in need for product exposure, and merge your advertisement along with their product. Shared advertisement is very common on the Internet as they appeal to the same target audience. The more advertisers you share with, greater the exposure of your product. In addition to the increased exposure, this method also proves less expensive than traditional methods: each advertiser shares a burden of the cost. The Internet has become the best choice for people to conduct business. This truly is a great way to combine the marketing power of two companies that offer similar or complimenting products to the same target population. Shared advertising can be as easy as teaming up with one of your vendors or suppliers.

3. Co-op Advertising

Co-op advertising refers to budgets available from manufacturers and suppliers to support your retail advertising efforts. Best known in the retail world where suppliers will offer co-op advertising support to retailers who feature their products in their advertising via coupons (as in the types of full-page promotions used regularly by grocery stores), the practice is now used also in the business-to-business arena by such large component suppliers as Intel, with its "Intel Inside" cooperative advertising program. If your business re-sells any service or product from a third party, make sure to participate in their co-op advertising program or, if they do not have one, request for them to help support your advertising efforts in a cooperative way.

4. Extra Measures

Whichever method you use, it is necessary to see that the advertisements are clear and impressive. It should state all the qualities of the product in a clear and tangible manner to attract the attention of the customers. It is essential for customers to see that the advertisments are understandable. It should state all the qualities of the product in a clear and crisp manner to attract the attention of the customers.

See also

External links


 
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This page was created on Jan 08, 2006