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The interesting thing about advertising is that every business needs it. It is an essential part of any business plan and all successful businesses credit their creative marketing strategy – their ability to reach new customers and network. Advertising, however, can be severely expensive, and sometimes, small businesses or start-ups struggle to begin and maintain quality advertising. The following chart, for example, gives a rough idea of popular advertising media and costs:
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Newspaper
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About $1200 for 2” x 2” ad, and easily over 5K for color printing ads in large papers
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Can’t make changes, typically run for a short time, and are too small
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Television
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Easily over 150K for 30 seconds!
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Great exposure – reach is wider but frequency of the ad costs more.
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Radio
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Usually around $100 for a week
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Airing the ad through radio is cost effective but the visual image of the ad will be missed out to attract the viewers.
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Online banners
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Vary from a few dollars to several hundred
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Traffic is only generated when the customer wants to click on your business. Banner ads look quite attractive and lure the viewers to click on it.
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Pixel advertising (on Wall Directory.com)
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$10 per year
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Quality leads with actual business interest in your products and services. Huge traffic generator and create unlimited traffic to your website.
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Clearly, there is an advertising medium for every budget, but what else can you do to promote your business?
1. Estimate budget for marketing, advertising, and promotions.
The average person makes the mistake to think twice to take an action. Sometimes the advertisers go with brainstorm idea, failed to research the cost effectiveness, investment and revenue generated from the various advertisements. Marketing is the general plan your business uses to represent your products, services, and branding promotions. Advertising is essentially any type of ad that you make visible (or audible) to your target audience. Promotions are the variety of offers, raffles, sales, and press releases that your business can generate into the community for greater exposure. Your advertisement should fulfill the goals of your business. Consider different online advertising forms such as joining the social networking sites, promoting through pixel advertisements, banners promotions, message billboards, and email campaigns.
2. Prioritize the cheap stuff and pick one high-end item.
Be prudent to explore different techniques that are affordable and cheap to generate huge revenues to your businesses. You could easily devote more money to promotional ads which create great revenue and more exposure to your business.
3. Keep your Advertisement more Creative and Attractive
Your advertisement should catch the eyes and attract the large group of people. Content of the ad should be simple, unique and easy to understand. Your advertisement should target the specific audience segment to strike your product and services for the immediate consumption.
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