How much should I spend on advertising? It is a question that every business owner asks themselves and struggles with. It is tough to track how much new business you get in most cases and therefore you don't know if you are just throwing away your money or putting it to good use.
The scare factor of course is that if you don't get the word out about what you are selling, you are pretty much doomed to failure. You can only imagine how many great inventions are sitting in people's basements because it wasn't marketed right. We see businesses go down each and every day and you have to wonder was it bad business or lack of advertising?
What you need to do is take advantage of the free advertising that is available to each and every one of us. It will save you money and get the word out to as many people as possible. I am of course talking about the internet.
There are tons of sites out there that want you to post your ads for free with no strings attached. They make their money in advertising for other people and you can take advantage of that and get your ad posted for free! Doing a search on some of the more popular engines will give you a great idea where to start placing your ads.
Social networks offer a unique opportunity for free advertising. They offer you two possibilities in developing your own page and usually also have their own classified sections. If you are not familiar with these networks, you may think that they are for hooking up and socializing, that is far from the truth. People spend hours on these sites reading about anything and everything. If you are selling wine and Jane Doe does a random search, she just may come across your site and you will have found some new business.
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.
From there, you need to start going to forums and other bloggers to do link exchanges. This will enable everyone to send people to each others sites and it won't cost anyone a penny out of their pocket. In this case, you may actually want to diversify and make buddies with people who have sites that are totally different from yours as you want to hit as wide an audience as you can. You might be selling product x and someone is on a poker site and it hits them in the face when they sign on and check their forum. All of a sudden they remember that they are out of x and click on your link and make a purchase.
You can use this technique with the fellow members of your chamber. Most communities have a Chamber of Commerce and you need to join. You are going to buddy up with all of these guys and offer to promote their business if they promote yours. Nothing major, just a flyer, or maybe a poster in the local drugstore. Anything you can do to expose your business to more clientele. All of this will cost you not one cent and you will have more advertising for free that you would have ever thought possible. - 15431
The scare factor of course is that if you don't get the word out about what you are selling, you are pretty much doomed to failure. You can only imagine how many great inventions are sitting in people's basements because it wasn't marketed right. We see businesses go down each and every day and you have to wonder was it bad business or lack of advertising?
What you need to do is take advantage of the free advertising that is available to each and every one of us. It will save you money and get the word out to as many people as possible. I am of course talking about the internet.
There are tons of sites out there that want you to post your ads for free with no strings attached. They make their money in advertising for other people and you can take advantage of that and get your ad posted for free! Doing a search on some of the more popular engines will give you a great idea where to start placing your ads.
Social networks offer a unique opportunity for free advertising. They offer you two possibilities in developing your own page and usually also have their own classified sections. If you are not familiar with these networks, you may think that they are for hooking up and socializing, that is far from the truth. People spend hours on these sites reading about anything and everything. If you are selling wine and Jane Doe does a random search, she just may come across your site and you will have found some new business.
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.
From there, you need to start going to forums and other bloggers to do link exchanges. This will enable everyone to send people to each others sites and it won't cost anyone a penny out of their pocket. In this case, you may actually want to diversify and make buddies with people who have sites that are totally different from yours as you want to hit as wide an audience as you can. You might be selling product x and someone is on a poker site and it hits them in the face when they sign on and check their forum. All of a sudden they remember that they are out of x and click on your link and make a purchase.
You can use this technique with the fellow members of your chamber. Most communities have a Chamber of Commerce and you need to join. You are going to buddy up with all of these guys and offer to promote their business if they promote yours. Nothing major, just a flyer, or maybe a poster in the local drugstore. Anything you can do to expose your business to more clientele. All of this will cost you not one cent and you will have more advertising for free that you would have ever thought possible. - 15431
About the Author:
Alex Wu is fascinated by numbers and trading in marketplace. He wants to build a free advertising site that leverages the power of social network to facilitate business hiring in his free ads website.
