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3 Tips To Reduce Your
Advertising Cost
Advertising
costs are a bitter pill to swallow for many small businesses. Many
businesses rely on advertising to keep customer traffic up, but the cost of
a continuous advertising presence can be overwhelming for some small
business owners especially in today’s sluggish economy. Here are 3 tips to
help you reduce your advertising costs while maintaining your advertising
effectiveness.
Piggyback
Do you regularly send out flyers or mailers to the local market?
Why not share that cost with another small business. If you normally buy the
back page of the weekly community newspaper, why not split that page with
another reputable retailer? Piggybacking your ad on another ad, or allowing
another retailer to piggyback on your ad essentially cuts your cost in half.
While it may also reduce your ad response somewhat, it is an excellent
method of maintaining a continuous advertising presence and saving money.
The key is to piggyback with a reputable partner. If you reduce the size of
your ad you put the control over who gets the other half in the hands of the
newspaper or magazine. Instead, buy the ad yourself and work out a deal with
a pre-selected small business in your area to ensure that your shared ad is
not shared with a competitor, or a company that you would prefer not to be
associated with.
Reduce
your Frequency
Advertising is usually measured in two ways: Reach and Frequency.
Reach is the number of people that actually see your ad, and Frequency is
the estimated number of times that those people see your ad. So a low reach,
high frequency campaign will result in your message being heard often by a
fairly small group of potential customers.
If you have to sacrifice one of these, it should be frequency. Your
12-week radio campaign can become a 10 week campaign. Or instead of 6 spots
per day you can reduce it to 5. Reach should be left untouched, simply
because you selected a particular group of customers for one reason: you
think they might buy your product or service. So don’t cut them out of the
equation. Instead, hit them less often with your marketing message.
Look to PR
Advertising is expensive. PR (Public Relations) is essentially
free. If you can gain some exposure through your local media outlets, you
can be sure that it will generate a better response for your small business
than your typical ad campaign. One article about your business in a local
newspaper or an appearance on a local TV show is better than advertising
because of the credibility it brings to your business. You could easily drop
a few ads from your campaign if you land some publicity for your business.
By keeping your local media informed of your business activities, including
things like major sales, expansions, or trends in your business that
customers would find interesting, you may open the doors to free publicity
and save advertising cash along with it.
By piggybacking your ads with those of other companies, slightly
reducing your frequency, and seeking PR opportunities for your business, you
will be able to reduce your advertising costs without greatly affecting your
advertising response rates.
Will Dylan is the Author of “Small Business, Big Marketing” a
powerful e-book for small businesses available through his website
http://www.marketingyoursmallbusiness.com . Will also offers article and
news release writing services. You can contact Will at
askwill@marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
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