The 2 Types Of Advertising For Small Businesses
The task of having to sort through multiple types of advertising can be overwhelming for a small business owner.
Not only do you have the responsibility of running the day to day operations of your business, but you must also make sure that new customers are coming through “your doors”.
One way of making the task of choosing what type of advertising is best for your business, is to understand that there are only 2 different forms of advertising that you can choose from.
These 2 types of advertising are creative advertising and directional advertising.
Creative advertising methods include radio, television, newspaper, billboards, direct mail, banners, floating monkeys with your business name on them, etc…
This type of advertising is temporary. In most cases creative advertising is used to help brand your name or logo. And in order for it to be effective you must use repetition to drive home your message.
Most businesses that are working on a shoestring budget find it hard to dig up the money needed to make creative advertising work. There are exceptions, but for the common business, running common ads, creative advertising can be a frustrating waste of money.
Directional advertising methods include yellow pages, search engine marketing and Internet yellow pages.
This type of advertising is designed to connect with the customer when he/she is ready to buy. Unlike creative advertising, directional advertising is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Directional advertising, done effectively, offers the greatest return on investment (ROI) over many other types of advertising, with the exception of word-of-mouth.
Although directional advertising is not the end all solution for some businesses, I can guarantee it should be a starting point for most.
Directional advertising can also be used as a form of insurance in conjuction with your creative advertising efforts.
For example… If you are having a special blow out sale, then there is no better way to promote it than using some form of creative advertising. But when your sale is over and the dust settles, and there are a few strageling customers who need to call and see if the sale that they heard on the radio or saw in the newspaper a week ago is still on; they are going to refer to some form of directional advertising to locate your number.
The use of these 2 types of advertising is fully determined by what you want your end result to be. If you need to promote a new product, then you will no doubt use creative advertising. And if you want to make sure that you capture all of your word-of-mouth business and be available when the consumer is ready-to-buy, then you must use directional advertising.
Whatever your decision, be sure to track your response so that your future advertising decisions are made much easier.
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