If you are trying to get a business off the ground, one of the biggest decisions is how much money should I spend on advertising? This is a very important choice as it is usually the difference in making your business successful or having it fail.
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?
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.
Finally, at least as far as the web goes, you are going to have your own dedicated site. If you have a limited budget, you should start out with a simple blog that you can talk about your business and make some daily posts about what you are selling. All of these sites are totally free so it will not cost you a penny and you will be competing with the people that have spend thousands on getting their site up an running.
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.
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?
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.
Finally, at least as far as the web goes, you are going to have your own dedicated site. If you have a limited budget, you should start out with a simple blog that you can talk about your business and make some daily posts about what you are selling. All of these sites are totally free so it will not cost you a penny and you will be competing with the people that have spend thousands on getting their site up an running.
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.
About the Author:
Alex Wu loves numbers and marketing. He operates a free advertising website that combines social networking with business marketing in this free ads network.
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