Marketing:

Cheaper and Effective ways of Advertising

With the cost of advertising on television and radio skyrocketing, a lot of businesses that cannot afford to designate large portions of their budget to advertising are looking at other options. For the primetime of radio and television with monster events like the Academy Awards and Superbowl, the cost of an ad for thirty seconds is sometimes the budget for the whole year for a small company. The search for cheaper but effective options has brought forth the following:

• Buses and cabs are a very effective advertising choice. They don’t cost a lot and people on the street, especially in large metropolitans, see them passing by every minute. The only requirement here is that the advertisement needs to be very short and catchy. You don’t want a long URL or message on a car that a consumer will not be able to see or commit to memory. In order for this type of advertising to be effective, the message needs to be able to be read in less than five seconds.
• Cable television, unlike broadcast television, doesn’t cost that much money in order to advertise on it. Local businesses can run ads on their local cable TV stations to target the people living in the community. Retail stores in the neighborhood can especially take advantage of this cheap advertising. This method of advertising usually runs under hundred dollars per showing.
• Build a website on the Internet and then place it on the search engines for local businesses. For example, you can advertise your business with Yahoo by submitting your URL to them. On Yahoo, you can do a search in your city for a restaurant or a retail store by typing in your zip code. The search results will also show the address to your website if you fall into the category. The website can also be built and maintained by another company. The money that is charged here is not astronomical and gives you an option of selling on the Internet through your own online store in addition to selling merchandise in your actual physical store.
• Never underestimate the power of the classified ad. People still read newspapers, even though news on the Internet is a lot easier to get. Place your ad in the local papers.
• The new gimmick in online advertising is sending flyers in emails. The effect is still to be studied but a lot of quarters are hailing it as an effective advertising strategy. People now read more email than regular mail.

Always try to be creative in advertising your business. Try to be versatile and try to use a combination of the options listed above.