Struggling To Advertise Your Small Business? Read This
Your small business means a lot to you. After all, you have spent years cultivating the skills and knowledge you needed to kickstart your small business, and now that it’s here, there’s a lot on the line. You desperately want it to be a success, but sometimes you feel like you’re swimming against the current. Does that sound familiar?
If you are struggling with small business advertising, you aren’t alone. Small business owners around the world are trying each and every day to get more recognition, but with big brands having such high budgets and claiming the monopoly on advertising, it can be very tricky to pull off.
In this post, you’ll learn ways to advertise your small business without going over budget.
Start small and build up as you go.
When you begin advertising your small business, it can be tempting to go all-out. There are so many avenues for effective advertising, you may want to throw all your mud at the wall and see what sticks. If you have the budget for this, go for it! But most small businesses need to take a more strategic approach to their advertising.
When you are searching for the right approach to advertising, it is wise to speak with an advisor from an advertising agency or consulting firm. By having a meeting with an impartial player, you can solidify your ideas, or move on to new ones if you feel your ideas are not going to serve your business any longer.
From this point onwards, you can use the advice you gained in the meeting to be precise about your advertising strategy. Build up as you go with a layered advertising approach, rather than throwing your entire budget at too many things at once.
Tailor your advertising to your desired clientele.
When it comes to achieving precision in advertising, the crucial aspect you must focus on is your clientele. Imagine your customer base as the sun in your business’ universe – everything else orbits around them!
Here are five demographics to analyse when you are examining your clientele.
- Age. Age is a key factor to understanding how best to advertise your small business. If the average age of your customers is over fifty, for example, you would be wasting your time advertising on TikTok, but you might find traction with Facebook Ads. By gleaning the average age of your customers, you can select advertising platforms based on the average user age on that platform.
- Gender. Our understanding of gender today is more complex than it has ever been, but that doesn’t mean gender shouldn’t be a factor. If your business sells beauty products, for example, you are likely to be selling mostly to women.
- Occupation. Educational background and occupation are important factors to consider among your clientele.
- Cultural background. If you sell products that are highly popular with members of a specific cultural group, you need to ensure you are choosing advertising platforms that are used often by members of this category.
- Family structure. Of course, whether or not your customer base often has children or lives in multigenerational households is also a big consideration.
By analysing your customer base within these five demographics, you will be able to better tailor your advertising to your findings. That way, you know the advertising you are paying for has the best chance of reaching the people to whom you want to sell your products!
Quality, not quantity – especially when it comes to physical advertising
Let’s talk about physical advertising for a second. While so much of advertising now exists in the digital sphere, the world of physical advertising continues to turn. Banners, signs, posters and flyers all remain as vital parts of the advertising process for many small businesses.
When it comes to physical components such as store signs, you need to be careful not to overdo it. You stand a better chance of drawing customers in with a high-quality, standout store sign, rather than multiple signs that are badly printed and easily worn out by the weather.
To avoid looking cheap, you should invest significantly in high quality signage that is well-positioned and eye catching. Spend a little time strategizing this before you order: everything, down to the font and colors you choose, can impact your customers’ level of attraction to your business.
Final thoughts…
Your small business deserves to be promoted successfully – after all, all your hard work can’t come to nothing! Make sure you use this guide to help you advertise strategically.
