Feb

Combining Technologies To Make The Most Of Your Advertising Dollar

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Advertising Dollar, Combining, Most, Technologies

Advertising has come a long way since people used to carve
messages into the bottoms of sandals, and it takes a little bit
of research to make that progress do more for your small
business.

I say small business because I own and operate a small business
specializing in helping small business make the most of their
advertising budget by combining different forms of advertising.
Print advertising will never disappear, as wonderful as the
internet and television are there is still no substitute for
flipping through a newspaper or sitting in your favorite chair
by the window checking out some of your favorite magazines. The
problem with print advertising be it newspaper or magazine for
most small business owners is the cost. Unless you commit
yourself to advertising in multiple issues you will not get the
best prices and for most of us that usually results in
purchasing a smaller ad than we had hoped for. One of the
biggest downfalls of newspapers is the lack of target marketing
capability, about the only thing you can tell from most
newspapers is where the majority of the subscribers live
although you can get other demographic info like
income/age/education bracket but that’s more info than we need.
Magazines do offer an advantage here by appealing to a much more
specific type of readership, demographic, target market or
whichever buzz word you prefer but that too is going to come at
a higher premium with similar sacrifices to the quality and size
of ad you would like to run.

Television, like magazines can be very useful in reaching a very
specific group of people with your advertising, for example if
you have a bait and tackle shop you can just purchase
advertising time during “Fishing With Fred” as opposed to
purchasing your time slot during the local news. If there is a
television show that you know reaches the people you know would
benefit from your product or service you can contact the
producers to find out how to buy commercial spots during their
program. Cable companies often offer discounts on commercial
production with the purchase of commercial airtime or “spots” as
they are called. These spots usually are either 15 or 30 seconds
long. With the falling costs of video cameras in addition to
computer video editing hardware and software the cost of a
television commercial is much more affordable than most people
think, you might even be able to make one yourself.

Enter the web site, the most “bang for your buck” an advertising
dollar can buy. Nothing can provide more information to a
potential customer than a web site, giving them hours or even
days worth of information. Offering a place to show photos,
videos, maps and tons of other info most of us could never
afford to put into a tv or print ad. Combining your web site
with your other forms of advertising can lower your overall
advertising costs by allowing you to place a smaller ad which
now contains your web site address and your basic contact info
and some key information about your business and reduce that
thirty second tv spot to a fifteen second spot. If you really
crunch the numbers you can reduce the cost of your print and tv
advertising enough to pay for your web site and it’s hosting.
And don’t forget having a web site opens up all sorts of
advertising methods and venues that other forms of advertising
could not begin to hold a candle to.