Advertising your business used to be so easy. Put a good Yellow Pages ad together, buy some air time on radio and/or TV, and set up a weekly newspaper ad selling your product. Then you could forget about it and wait for the customers to come in.
Sadly, this formula no longer works. More and more of my clients are telling me that what they used to do just doesn’t work anymore. No one uses the Yellow Pages—heck, most people probably don’t even have a phone book. Almost no one buys the daily newspaper anymore, no one is listening to the radio, and most TV ads are being ignored.
Other problems with traditional advertising are that it can be very expensive and it is almost impossible to measure how well it is working.
So what should business owners be using?
First, you must understand that there are two different tasks your advertising should be accomplishing:
- First, your advertisement should reach the prospect right when they are looking for a particular solution. This is what the old Yellow Pages phone book did. If I needed a plumber, I went to the book, found plumbers, and started calling until I found the right one for me.
- Second, your advertisement should attract and inform prospects about sales and events you have in order to draw them into your business to make a purchase. This is why business owners normally use radio, TV and newspaper ads.
Most business owners understand that prospects are now “Googling” when they need a product or service. That is why I am seeing more of my clients spending money on consultants who promise to raise their rankings (SEO work). This can be costly and very few business owners understand it, so many of them are just ignoring it altogether.
I have found a cost-effective solution that I am now recommending to all of my coaching clients. Check out the informational videos at Yodle.com and schedule a call (I don’t get a commission). They have developed an economical solution specifically designed for small businesses.
Advertising for product sales, new offers, and special events is much more complicated. Unfortunately, this is a skill every business owner must comprehend, at least enough to outsource effectively. In my coaching program, I detail the following low-cost, highly effective internet advertising options:
- List building opt-in pages
- Sales and event landing pages
- Email marketing campaigns
- Direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns
These are more complicated, and really beyond the scope of this brief article. Contact me at wayne@wjb-cpa.com if you are interested in exploring how to easily add these to your toolbox. Every client who has invested the time into learning how to use these new advertising methods has experienced a dramatic increase in sales.
Let’s get started making this year your most profitable year ever!