Why Advertise?
The success of many small businesses depend on how you wish to grow the profits by using appropriate advertising. Advertising builds reputation of your company in the market and encourage customers to try your products or services, increasing sales and generating more profit. However, before you advertise it is important to understand what’s your target customers, whether male or female, their age group, how many in number you want to target, where to target at local, regional or national level in order to reach many customers.
Advertise your business
Advertisement can be achieved via traditional media like television, radio, newspaper, websites and pamphlets or via popular media these days like banner advertisement, Google AdWords, Facebook advertising. Depending upon how much increase in sales you are aiming, advertising budget can be set and return on investment can be measured.
For example, if you spend $100 every month on advertising your business and now you want to increase monthly sales by 10%, then you are required to increase advertisement budget by 50% that means $150. This calculation can be more or less depending upon what business wishes to achieve.
Application and Process:
Assume Alex runs a coffee shop in a commercial area and his target is to increase sales by 30% in 6 months. He generally spends $100 every month on advertising on radio, distributes pamphlets in local area. He is ready to increase his advertising budget by 50% this time, but also looking for inexpensive ways to promote his business.
For this it is important for his coffee shop to be more visible in the market like shown in local searches, so Alex can register on Google My Business, Bling Places for Business and in local directory. He can get active on social network sites like Facebook, Instagram to communicate with users, interact with them and seek more information about their interests, needs and demands. This communication will create brand awareness, asking for customer reviews, promote customers to take pictures and post online which can promote his business.
The 2018, social Media Marketing Industry report shows that 72% of marketers use Facebook ads as paid social media followed by Instagram ads at 31%. Beyond that, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter running in competition with 13%, 12% and 11% respectively. Adding menu online can make it easier for customers and decide to visit there or not as there are so many options available in the market and customer like to know what to expect before visiting.
Keeping website up to date with latest information and upcoming promotion, connecting customers with story of business. Alex can build relationship with customers by offering loyalty cards to earn a free coffee after purchasing 10 coffees. Furthermore, a single recommendation can have a far greater impact to word of mouth advertising.
More satisfied the customers will be, higher the chance that they refer to people in their network. According to Texas Tech research, 83% of satisfied customers are willing to refer others, but only 29% actually do because they were never asked. Alex can track advertising by tracking the period of advertisement, linking to any spike in sales for the required period and understanding targeted customers.
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