If you have never had any reason to understand advertising and marketing before—and now with your home business, you need to be able to make some decisions about how to promote your business—getting started can be overwhelming. How do you know where to turn and what sort of advertising is best suited for your business and market?
First of all, keep in mind that there are several different types of advertising and they have the ability to reach different markets: print, web, public (bus signs and billboards), television, radio, events and conferences, and direct mail. Within these overarching categories, there are all sorts of sub-categories that are geared toward a local, regional, national, or international market and those that can be targeted to reach even more specific demographics. The cost to you for advertising will depend on several factors—who you’re advertising with and what type of advertising it is, the frequency of insertion and viewer-ship, the demographic, etc.
There are a few things you should know about and keep in mind as you evaluate your advertising options: what type of advertising will reach the market you are trying to target? What do you need to know about the deadlines and specifics and will it work with your business and style? What are the “specs” or specific design requirements of the ad—is this something you can do or will you need a designer (or will the advertiser provide the design work too)? How can you pay for the advertising—by insertion, or is there any sort of trade available, and are there discounts that you might qualify for?
Finally, you will want to develop a way to figure out if your advertising is working. While this isn’t an exact science, you can track page views and click-throughs with web marketing, and if you learn how to code your advertisements and collect the data from prospects and customers, you can get a pretty good idea of which advertising is being seen and responded to and which is not. Ask the advertiser what sort of information they can provide to you as part of the contracted service, the rest will be up to you.
See Also: Open Your Mouth Marketing
Do You Have an Elevator Marketing Pitch?