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 facet is to post on as many free classified sites as you can find that involve your particular business. There are some well know national ones like Craig's List but there are thousands of other ones too. If you have no knowledge of them, do a search on the web and you will get the general idea of how many opportunities you have to advertise for free.
After you get done splashing your business all over the classified ads, you are going to continue right on to the social networks. I am not talking about dating sites, but all of these social sites that allow you to post your life on your own webpage. If you think this is nuts go on one of them and start rooting around. You will find business after business with a page or a lens. Everyone is cashing in on the individuals that spend countless hours on these sites surfing.
The final thing you can take advantage of for free advertising on the internet is to develop your own webpage. Now I know you are thinking that this is a very expensive undertaking, but it doesn't have to be. True, eventually you are going to have to put out some cash and have to have a real site up, but in the meantime you can use a blog. You just need to get something on the web.
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.
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 facet is to post on as many free classified sites as you can find that involve your particular business. There are some well know national ones like Craig's List but there are thousands of other ones too. If you have no knowledge of them, do a search on the web and you will get the general idea of how many opportunities you have to advertise for free.
After you get done splashing your business all over the classified ads, you are going to continue right on to the social networks. I am not talking about dating sites, but all of these social sites that allow you to post your life on your own webpage. If you think this is nuts go on one of them and start rooting around. You will find business after business with a page or a lens. Everyone is cashing in on the individuals that spend countless hours on these sites surfing.
The final thing you can take advantage of for free advertising on the internet is to develop your own webpage. Now I know you are thinking that this is a very expensive undertaking, but it doesn't have to be. True, eventually you are going to have to put out some cash and have to have a real site up, but in the meantime you can use a blog. You just need to get something on the web.
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.
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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