Advertising your small business on a tight budget

Now that you’ve got your small business off the ground and running, it’s time to start thinking about advertising.  But how can you do that in an inexpensive way?  According to the Small Business Administration, 5% of an entrepreneur's gross sales should be budgeted for advertising.  Banner and print ads can be expensive so here are some helpful tips to advertise on a tight budget.

For starters, try Google Ad Words.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a lot of traffic.  A small daily budget of $10-$20 per day can provide you with a large amount of traffic and in turn qualified leads, as long as the ad is relevant.  “AdWords and PPC [pay-per-click] can give you crazy amounts of traffic if you are tight with your campaign and run niche ad groups,” explained Andrew Riker an SEO specialist at WordStream. “Focused, long-tail keywords that are specific to your industry will cause the highest possible click-through rate and in-turn conversions.”  (https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=adwords&hl=en_US&ltmpl=jfk&passive=false&ifr=false&alwf=true&continue=https://adwords.google.com/um/gaiaauth?apt%3DNone%26ltmpl%3Djfk&error=newacct&sacu=1&sarp=1)

Next up is advertising on Facebook.  You can choose whatever sum you see fit so you can start out small.  Facebook allows you to target customers in an effective and focused way.  You can pinpoint specific demographics.  This kind of targeting allows you to minimize extemporaneous clicks from consumers who are just browsing or searching for information and gets you the most for your money.  You can set a small budget of even less than $10 a day and target customers by age, gender, education and interests similar to the product you are selling.  “Even if people don’t immediately make a purchase because of a Facebook ad, many of them may wind up “liking” your business which can allow you to create a database of potential customers.”  (http://www.facebook.com/advertising/)

Another good site is StumbleUpon Paid Discovery.  It costs as little as $0.05 a click so for $5 you can get 100 unique visitors to your site.  It’s also a great way to advertise contests, giveaways and big promotions.  “And if the content you are promoting proves to be popular and receives a lot of “likes,” you will start receiving free traffic from Stumble, which can go on for months, even after you have stopped advertising.”  (https://www.stumbleupon.com/pd/)

Another great way to advertise your business on a budget is to submit articles on topics your customers may be interested in.  Try Ezinearticles.com, Articlesbase.com or TheFreeLibrary.com.  “In exchange for content, they allow you to include a couple of back links to your website.”  This provides you with potential traffic to your business and also might help establish you as an expert in your field

Try donating products to volunteer services or worthy causes.  If you build a website for a cause, you can get a lot of revenue back in advertising.  This investment of time can really pay off and result in new business.  Other vendors who participate might see what a fine job you’re doing and hire you to help their own businesses.

Hire someone to blog for you.  Blogging is a great way to advertise your company’s services and offer your customer information that is of interest to them – something that goes beyond the reach of your product.

Use community sites and local directories.  “Community-based online networks such as Thumbtack (http://www.thumbtack.com/) and Quentin’s Friends (http://www.quentinsfriends.com/) are a great way to cost-effectively get the word out about your business to more targeted groups.”  Quentin Friends is an invitation-only network where members can post recommendations and offers for their products and services for a small fee of $15.  The service is location-specific, so your ad will go out to thousands of people who are specifically in your geographic area.  For example, Dana Leavy, CEO of Asprye Solutions, ROI by using the site has been 6,500 percent.

Try LinkedIn Ads (http://www.linkedin.com/advertising).  LinkedIn Ads can work well because it allows you to target a specific audience by geographic area, demographics, job titles or LinkedIn Groups.  You can tailor your ads specifically to group users which can result in great conversation rates and ROI.

Lastly, try distributing flyers.  It is particularly useful if your small business focuses on a particular area.  They needn’t be expensive.  Likely you know someone that can help you design a flyer inexpensively and you can print them in your home for free.   Hire some high school or college students to distribute them for you at a low hourly rate.  They can hand them out to people on the street or place them on parked cars, house doors and distribute them to businesses and apartment complexes. 

As I’ve written today, you don’t need a big budget to advertise your small business.  Many people think otherwise and it hinders them from getting the word out.  Try some of these tips and you might be surprised at the rewards you reap.

Until next time…