How to advertise your small business

Everybody wants new profitable customers - it doesn't matter what business you're in, you need customers.

OK, that's not such a profound statement but it's really obvious. But not any old customer, you need a) customers who want your product and b) customers who are going to provide you with profits.

Below are some ideas to help you communicate your business to the right customers through advertising.

Advertise to the right customers

You know, really, the people you are targeting are just like you and me. We live our daily lives being targeted by other companies and buying their products. So we are the right customers for them.

But who are the right customers for you?.

Everything you undertake is around your customers. Every product, and every investment. You need to understand who your customers are and where they go!.

Think about when they are thinking about making a decision for your product. What time of year, where they physically are, who is influencing them and who is going to pay.

Advertising media

Advertising does not need to be expensive. It is very cost effective IF you understand what we have described above.

The splatter-gun effect where you just target everyone and hope some of the messages stick is not going to work at all

So, now you know your customers and where they are when they are thinking about looking for your product, how are you going to communicate with them?

There are many simple and cost-effective solutions you can use, and here are a few of them:

• member get member

  - if you already have excited customers get them to recruit more for you - but offer them a gift or reward
  
  

• Internet advertising

  - pay per click on the search engines is a great way to get customers to your website if it hasn't got good rankings - but you need to know what you are doing - My colleague Perry Marshall has written a 5-day email tutorial on Google AdWords and it covers some of the most important things you need to know. The Google Adwords course is free and I think you'll find it very helpful:
  
  

• your industry's promotion partners

  - there are a lot of companies that are supporting your industry to promote how wonderful it is - for example, tourist boards. If you have a restaurant, hotel or B&B you must be in these guides.
  
  

• Local businesses and consumers

  - one of the easiest and cheap methods of advertising is to your local community. You can either get the Post Office to put things through people's letterboxes or print a flyer and do it yourself. (Don't forget to put a call to action on this though)

Those were 4 easy advertising methods.

here are another 25 ideas you can use right away on marketing your business.

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