This article is geared more towards a the owners of typical neighborhood businesses, but some of this information can be applicable for website owners as well.

INTRODUCTION

After much consideration and careful planning, you finally decide to start your own business. Congratulations! You do everything just as you planned; implementing those sure-fire methods you developed to get you on the fast track to making a ton of money. There’s only one problem- you have no customers!

Without customers, you won’t make a dime. You could have the best product or service in the world, and if nobody knows about it, you’ll never turn a profit. You don’t need me to tell you the importance of advertising, right? You already know that advertising is the key to getting your new business off the ground. Now you just want to know how you’re expected to do all this advertising when you’re not selling anything, right?

In this article, I will explain 10 ways to advertise your business for under $100 and bring outstanding results. I’ll keep it brief and get right to the point. So let’s get started.

10 WAYS TO ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS FOR UNDER $100

1. Business Cards

It’s true. Business cards are the absolute number one cheapest and fastest way to promote your business. Business cards are very inexpensive. Even if you spend $20 on 1,000 business cards and you only get one customer for every 500 business cards you hand out, that’s two customers you now have for a $20 investment. Do the math. That’s $10 per customer. How much is a customer worth to you? If you run a deli, maybe a customer’s initial worth is about $8, but what about all the repeat business in the future? And if you own a roofing company, maybe each customer is worth $3,000-$5,000. It all depends on the nature of your business, and that’s up to you to do the math. But I’m sure you will agree- business cards are well worth the investment. To get your business cards into as many hands as possible you have to be creative. Have you ever tried “accidentally” leaving your business card at your table when you leave a restaurant? Many convenience stores and gas stations will allow you to leave your business card either on the counter or on a bulletin board. The same is true for many barber shops, home improvement stores, laundromats, thrift stores and community centers.

2. Yard Signs

Depending on the quantity you are willing to purchase, corrugated plastic yard signs can be purchased anywhere in the price range of $10 to as low as $1 a piece. You can use them to advertise any type of business service, an upcoming sale, or just simply to let people know that your store is “NOW OPEN”. If your local city does not allow you to stick them all over the side of the road, you can either apply for a permit to do so, or place them in your own yard. Be sure to call all of your relatives and friends to be sure they help you out on this. If you know any other non-competing business owners in your area, ask them if you can put a sign in front of their store. Look for upcoming garage sales in your local newspaper and contact the homeowner. Tell them you’ll give them $10 if they will allow you to place your sign in their yard for the duration of their yard sale. You’ll be surprised how fast you’ll get noticed.

3. Vehicle Magnets

Vehicle magnets can be purchased for somewhere around $20-$40 per magnet, depending on the size and quantity you purchase. A good idea would be to have one on each side of the vehicle and possibly one on the rear as well. Don’t forget to order extra for your friends and family! There you go, asking your friends and family for more help again. You will notice that many of the advertising methods discussed in this article will benefit greatly from the help of your friends and family. They will play a vital role in helping you get your business off the ground. Getting back to the subject, vehicle magnets will turn your car into a rolling billboard. The more you drive, the more you advertise. When you go to a busy parking lot, for instance, the mall, grocery store or supercenter, be sure to park at the very end of the parking lot instead of fighting for that tight space towards the front. By parking at the very end of the lot, this leaves a clear, unobstructed view of your vehicle as soon as someone pulls in (or out). Great advertising!

4. Flyers

Flyers! They can be left virtually anywhere and you can even print them yourself for next to nothing! My personal #1 rule about printing flyers yourself is to do so from a laser printer. The ink of typical ink jet printers will run all over the page at the slightest sight of moisture, and you don’t want that. I’ve seen brand new black ink laser printers for as low as $99, and color laser printers for around $300. They don’t cost that much more than ink jet printers and it actually cost you a lot less to print, per page. The toner cartridge in a laser printer will go a lot further than that of an ink jet printer. Here’s another tip: Want to save money on buying the color printer or the color toner? Buy colored paper. It’s an easy way to print in just black ink, but still make your flyer stand out. You can leave your flyers just about anywhere you can leave your business card. Also, if you have a small community newspaper for classifieds, coupons or local news, contact them and see how much it would cost to have your flyer inserted into their next production. I’ve seen classified newspapers with a circulation of 30,000 charge only $25 per 1,000 inserts- way cheaper than purchasing one of their small classified ads!

5. Direct Marketing

Direct marketing can come from many forms including mail, telephone, e-mail, and fax. Direct marketing offers one of the best ways to directly reach your customers, and you can almost immediately measure its success. Unfortunately, direct marketing is usually the most expensive form of marketing when you calculate how much it costs to acquire each new individual prospect. However, there are ways you can both reduce the cost of the actual marketing campaign while also improving the overall results. Have you printed flyers already? Mail 100 flyers or catalogs out each week along with your business card or some other sort of information about your service or product. At the current price for a USPS first class stamp, that’s only $39 per week. You can reduce postage costs further if you send out postcards, or mail to each address in an entire carrier route. I have mailed 32 page newspapers to entire carrier routes for about 14 cents per piece- imagine how inexpensive an envelope could be. Also, sometimes it’s best to try not to appeal to everyone- it may wind up appealing to no one. Instead, try to focus on one specific demographic and capture all the readers within that group. You may find that you receive a higher rate of success.

6. Public Records

This works especially well for those of you who would like to advertise to new business owners, new homeowners or those working on their home. I was managing a marketing campaign for a home improvement business and brought them more business than the company could keep track of. They had to stop advertising because they were not able to take on all the work that was coming their way. How much did the entire campaign cost? $15. That’s right. I called the local courthouse and requested records for every single person who took out a building permit in the last 12 months. The next day, I went to the courthouse, paid $15, and picked up a CD-ROM which contained approximately 8,000 names, telephone numbers and addresses of every person within that district who had taken out a building permit in the past year, all put together in a handy Excel spreadsheet file. A few phone calls later and you’ve got more work than you can handle! If you recently received a new business license, how many flyers did you receive in the mail from credit card processing and promotional item companies? Too many, right? Well you can obtain a list of every person who recently applied for a business license right there at your local courthouse. If you have a product or service that could tailor to the needs of a new business, why not start there?

7. Standby Advertising

When is the last time you paid full price for an ad in your local newspaper or a magazine? If you ever have, you’re wasting your money. Make a list of every publication you would like to advertise in, then contact the advertising department and get all the details you need about ad sizes and requirements. Next, make a ton of print-ready ads and note which publication each ad was made for. Then, contact each publication and let them know that you have ads which are print ready and can be provided immediately should they ever have any last minute advertising space that needs filled. Having managed a newsprint tabloid myself, I can tell you from my own personal experience. For a magazine or newspaper, page sequences come in 4’s. Think of a rectangular sheet of paper printed on both sides and folded in half like a book. Each sheet of paper makes four pages. You can’t have 39 pages in your magazine. If it’s time to go to press and the magazine company hasn’t sold the last page worth of advertising space, it’s got to be filled with something. That’s when they call you. They’ll practically give it away just to get it filled and get the publication off to the presses in time. You can expect to see a discount anywhere from 20-80% below regular advertising rates.

8. Human Billboards

Most effective if you operate a storefront, a human billboard can be the source of a ton of immediate traffic to your business. Have a huge sale this weekend? Your grand opening is only days away? Call your favorite niece or nephew and offer to give them $50 to stand out on the corner for a few hours with a nice flashy sign. If that doesn’t work, you can always lookup “Special Event Promotions” in your local yellow pages. Most of those companies should offer personnel for this service. This is something that demands immediate attention from passerby and achieves immediate results.

9. Coupon Books

Do you have a local coupon book or coupon newspaper in your area? Who doesn’t love a valuable coupon? You can usually land a pretty decent sized coupon in one of these publications for under $100. What’s great about these publications is that they usually offer the coupon designing services free of charge with your ad. This means that you don’t have to own and know how to use a ton of fancy programs on your computer. Just sketch out your idea and fax it over, or just explain it to them over the phone. They will usually either fax or email you proofs of your coupon until you approve the design, at which time it will go to print. An advantage over a coupon book versus a classified ad is that newspapers have a shelf life of 24 hours or less. People read through the classifieds then throw them away because a whole new classified section is waiting for them at their doorstep the following morning. On the contrary, coupon books are usually printed weekly or bi-weekly, which means your ad now has a shelf life of 7-14 days! This way, more people will likely see your ad versus just running a simple, one day classified ad in the newspaper.

10. Word Of Mouth

I’ve saved the best for last. The absolute greatest, sure-fire way of obtaining new customers is by word of mouth. Again, call on your friends and family. Make sure they are letting everyone know about your business. Make sure every customer goes away with a desire to tell others about your business. How do you do that? Well, I’ve found that by buying a stack of $30 gift certificates at a popular restaurant and offering “free dinner for two” to any customer who refers somebody to you works extremely well. Now, you have put your own customers to work for you. Again, before you do any sort of advertising, you should sit down and determine how much a new customer is worth to you. If a new customer is worth more than dinner for two, then by all means- try it!

CONCLUSION

There is no specific list of advertising methods that will work great for absolutely every business. However, without writing an industry-specific article, I hope that everyone who has read this has gained something useful, and possibly something you wish to implement in the future. If you are looking for more specific information on one aspect of advertising, interested in online marketing, or would like to learn more about some other aspects of managing and operating your business, please visit http://sitefever.com/ for more helpful articles, tips and information.

HELPFUL RESOURCES

Vistaprint sells cheap but highly professional business cards, flyers, brochures, postcards, etc. They even have an online designer which allows you to design your items very easily.

http://vistaprint.com/

Inexpensive distributors for custom made yard signs.

http://bigdaddyssigns.com/

http://supercheapsigns.com/

http://yardsignsdirect.com/

Distributors for custom made vehicle magnets; however, your best deal will most likely come from an E-bay distributor.

http://signoutfitters.com/

http://speedysigns.com/

http://ebay.com/

Print shops for your flyers. Possibly less expensive than printing them yourself if you wish to print in full color or on glossy paper.

http://overnightprints.com/

http://printoutlet.us/

http://psprint.com/

http://vistaprint.com/

Websites which provide full demographic information on postal carrier routes within the USA. A must for any direct mail marketing campaign.

http://melissadata.com/

http://carrierroutes.com/

The Direct Marketing Association

http://the-dma.org/

Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe to SiteFever.com's Full Feed RSS to get daily updates of this blog!

Be a good sport and promote my article! - del.icio.us - Furl - Netscape - reddit - StumbleUpon

Category: Internet Marketing
Article posted by: Neon on July 8th, 2007