Establishing an advertising budget for a new or existing business is very challenging. Unless you have the money to spend on tracking your bounce back, you are not really sure how it is working for you. Not all businesses can afford real tracking and other than putting a coupon in with your ad, you have no real idea to know if it is effective or not.
Of course, the flip side of that is that if you don't get the word on the street about your business, you have absolutely no shot of ever succeeding. You know you have to advertise, it is just common sense. You watch TV every day and see every major company in your face every time a commercial comes on. If McDonald's is still advertising, you better! Problem is that you don't have their budget, how can you keep up with the times. The answer is FREE 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 have your own site up you will also offer link exchanges with other bloggers and web sites. Do some searches in forums and blog sites and see who is popular. These sites don't necessarily have to be affiliated with what you are selling, actually for this, you would probably prefer that they were not. You are just trying to let people know about your business and this is a great way to do 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. - 16928
Of course, the flip side of that is that if you don't get the word on the street about your business, you have absolutely no shot of ever succeeding. You know you have to advertise, it is just common sense. You watch TV every day and see every major company in your face every time a commercial comes on. If McDonald's is still advertising, you better! Problem is that you don't have their budget, how can you keep up with the times. The answer is FREE 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 have your own site up you will also offer link exchanges with other bloggers and web sites. Do some searches in forums and blog sites and see who is popular. These sites don't necessarily have to be affiliated with what you are selling, actually for this, you would probably prefer that they were not. You are just trying to let people know about your business and this is a great way to do 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. - 16928
About the Author:
Alex Wu runs a free advertising website that lets people post their ads, build profiles, and connect. He hopes to create an active environment for businesses place their free ads.
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