Marketing for Small Businesses » Advertising – is it right for your business?

Advertising – is it right for your business?

Yesterday our Business Development Manager left the warmth and comfort of her bed, in the early hours of the morning, to attended her networking group’s weekly breakfast meeting. This week she reported back to me that the group had decided each member business would advertise in a local business directory.

If you are a small business owner or manager, chances are at some point in time you also have been approached by a newspaper to place an ad in their publication. Newspapers and magazines pay for themselves through advertising. Depending on the publication you can pay several $100s to several $1000s for the privilege.

When a publication runs an ‘editorial’ or more accurately named ‘advertorial’ on a business, the space is usually paid for by the advertisers that appear alongside. The featured company will provide the publication with a list of their suppliers, who are shaken down to pay for the editorial space. In return they get to run an ad in ‘support’ of the feature company or organisation. Many businesses agree out of loyalty to the featured organisation rather than a decision that the ad will provide them with a return on investment. This is what the publication’s advertising sales rep is hoping for – it makes their job so much easier.

But before you get dragged into agreeing to advertise in just any publication, ask yourself a few key marketing related questions first:

How will this ad fit into my overall marketing strategy and budget?
Will this ad enhance the effectiveness of other marketing initiatives I am doing or plan to do?
Will the publication be read by my target audience?
(if you don’t know, ask the publication to provide you with their demographics and reach, i.e how many households/businesses/subscribers it goes to; the age, gender, income, interests and geographic location of these readers.)
How much business or how many leads will the ad need to generate to provide a sufficient return on investment?
What will the goal of the ad be?
What message, incentive and call to action will I use in the ad to achieve that goal?
How will I measure the effectiveness of this ad?

These same questions should be applied to any advertising related decision?

Keep in mind that is very rare for a one-off ad to bring any level of return on investment. It can take up to 7 exposures to an advertising message before a person is actively ready to move towards a purchase.

The point of advertising is to ultimately bring a far greater return on investment than the cost – otherwise why on earth would you do it?