I Have a Small Business, Should I Advertise?
First of all, let me give you a pat on the back for taking the bold step forward.
As a person who has been through it myself, I know making the decision to start your own small home-based business is not an easy one.
So, congratulations, from the bottom of my heart, is in order.
Take comfort in the fact that not a lot of people dare make the step and go to their graves wishing that they had taken the step...
a small and seemingly insignificant one...
forward.
So now that you've given yourself a headstart or a new beginning, it's time to get serious.
How do you get business? Should you advertise? How big should your budget be? where do you start? How extensive should your online advertising strategy be? how much are you supposed to spend on advertising online? Is AdWords the only way out of the realm of invisibility...
no, the right question is, is it the only door open? One word of advice, from one small business owner to another...
never put all your eggs into one basket.
There are lots of ways to find exposure and we should never limit ourselves to just one method.
That would be like putting all your hopes into one advertising avenue and when it crashes or just doesn't turn out the way you have hoped for it to turn out, your hopes crashes along with it.
We want to prevent that and a small business, especially a start-up one, cannot survive without an emotionally trodden owner.
The first thing you need to do is to adapt a BIG PICTURE mindset for your small business.
As small as it is, advertising and marketing needs to be done in incorporating larger scale in order to reach maximum number of people within the shortest period of time using minimum the cost.
Impossible? Think again.
Now, the thing is that you can promote your small business in a big way using multiple methods of advertising and marketing.
For a start, tell everyone about it.
when I first started out my small writing and designing business, I printed out 500 business cards and handed 10s to people I am familiar with, 5s out to people I am QUITE familiar with and then 1 to those I've just met.
Ask your friends and family members to keep your business card handy and hand them out to the people they meet whom they think might need the services that your small business provides.
Contrary to popular beliefs, it IS POSSIBLE to advertise for free on the internet.
I won't go into that in this article since I know I can write a whole book on that one alone - but it's possible and many people all around the world has been generating reasonable to mind-blowing traffic to their websites with proper search engine marketing, online promotion strategies, tie-ups, partnerships, affiliations, link exchange, article marketing...
just to name a few.
Free advertising is possible but it takes a heckuva lot of time, so you need to have the patience and diligence for that one.
While advertising for free is possible, you should not rely on this method alone to get the word out because it might take YEARS! And I know you can't sustain the cost of maintaining your small business this way, so you'll definitely need to advertise.
On whether to use a big or small budget, it all depends.
I would strongly recommend jumpstarting traffic with advertising like AdWords or small, random banner advertising.
But like I always say, don't get ahead of yourself...
keep to your budget and try to worm your way in to see if you can barter it in for something worth your time.
Another popular method of getting the word out for small business owners is to populate the internet with links into their website via a network of people.
Facebook is mighty popular these days and although I don't know how long the fad is going to last, it's worth a look.
Article marketing is another fantastically effective (but time consuming) method of getting links into your website.
Last but not least, you can always spend a small amount of money printing out brochures or small flyers, stand on the road side and hand them out to passer-bys.
I have a friend who owned a small boutique and online business.
With a tiny budget, she spent approximately USD$150 a month printing cute little bookmarks and handed them out randomly to people in shopping malls.
She had the guts, determination and 'desperation' to just walk up to someone and introduce herself this way.
"Hi, you don't know me but my name is Lilian.
I have a small boutique down the road and I would like to give you this little bookmark.
The website address is here and there's my phone number of it.
Have fun shopping.
Bye".
And she'd just walk off.
Today, Lilian owns four boutiques in strategic locations and earning a handsome income from them.
All because she started small and dared to just do it.
(Pssstt! I have a feeling she's earning even more than me now but...
let's just keep it between you and me.
)
As a person who has been through it myself, I know making the decision to start your own small home-based business is not an easy one.
So, congratulations, from the bottom of my heart, is in order.
Take comfort in the fact that not a lot of people dare make the step and go to their graves wishing that they had taken the step...
a small and seemingly insignificant one...
forward.
So now that you've given yourself a headstart or a new beginning, it's time to get serious.
How do you get business? Should you advertise? How big should your budget be? where do you start? How extensive should your online advertising strategy be? how much are you supposed to spend on advertising online? Is AdWords the only way out of the realm of invisibility...
no, the right question is, is it the only door open? One word of advice, from one small business owner to another...
never put all your eggs into one basket.
There are lots of ways to find exposure and we should never limit ourselves to just one method.
That would be like putting all your hopes into one advertising avenue and when it crashes or just doesn't turn out the way you have hoped for it to turn out, your hopes crashes along with it.
We want to prevent that and a small business, especially a start-up one, cannot survive without an emotionally trodden owner.
The first thing you need to do is to adapt a BIG PICTURE mindset for your small business.
As small as it is, advertising and marketing needs to be done in incorporating larger scale in order to reach maximum number of people within the shortest period of time using minimum the cost.
Impossible? Think again.
Now, the thing is that you can promote your small business in a big way using multiple methods of advertising and marketing.
For a start, tell everyone about it.
when I first started out my small writing and designing business, I printed out 500 business cards and handed 10s to people I am familiar with, 5s out to people I am QUITE familiar with and then 1 to those I've just met.
Ask your friends and family members to keep your business card handy and hand them out to the people they meet whom they think might need the services that your small business provides.
Contrary to popular beliefs, it IS POSSIBLE to advertise for free on the internet.
I won't go into that in this article since I know I can write a whole book on that one alone - but it's possible and many people all around the world has been generating reasonable to mind-blowing traffic to their websites with proper search engine marketing, online promotion strategies, tie-ups, partnerships, affiliations, link exchange, article marketing...
just to name a few.
Free advertising is possible but it takes a heckuva lot of time, so you need to have the patience and diligence for that one.
While advertising for free is possible, you should not rely on this method alone to get the word out because it might take YEARS! And I know you can't sustain the cost of maintaining your small business this way, so you'll definitely need to advertise.
On whether to use a big or small budget, it all depends.
I would strongly recommend jumpstarting traffic with advertising like AdWords or small, random banner advertising.
But like I always say, don't get ahead of yourself...
keep to your budget and try to worm your way in to see if you can barter it in for something worth your time.
Another popular method of getting the word out for small business owners is to populate the internet with links into their website via a network of people.
Facebook is mighty popular these days and although I don't know how long the fad is going to last, it's worth a look.
Article marketing is another fantastically effective (but time consuming) method of getting links into your website.
Last but not least, you can always spend a small amount of money printing out brochures or small flyers, stand on the road side and hand them out to passer-bys.
I have a friend who owned a small boutique and online business.
With a tiny budget, she spent approximately USD$150 a month printing cute little bookmarks and handed them out randomly to people in shopping malls.
She had the guts, determination and 'desperation' to just walk up to someone and introduce herself this way.
"Hi, you don't know me but my name is Lilian.
I have a small boutique down the road and I would like to give you this little bookmark.
The website address is here and there's my phone number of it.
Have fun shopping.
Bye".
And she'd just walk off.
Today, Lilian owns four boutiques in strategic locations and earning a handsome income from them.
All because she started small and dared to just do it.
(Pssstt! I have a feeling she's earning even more than me now but...
let's just keep it between you and me.
)
