If you are trying to get a business off the ground, one of the biggest decisions is how much money should I spend on advertising? This is a very important choice as it is usually the difference in making your business successful or having it fail.
The scare factor of course is that if you don't get the word out about what you are selling, you are pretty much doomed to failure. You can only imagine how many great inventions are sitting in people's basements because it wasn't marketed right. We see businesses go down each and every day and you have to wonder was it bad business or lack of advertising?
What you need to do is take advantage of the free advertising that is available to each and every one of us. It will save you money and get the word out to as many people as possible. I am of course talking about the internet.
The first facet is to post on as many free classified sites as you can find that involve your particular business. There are some well know national ones like Craig's List but there are thousands of other ones too. If you have no knowledge of them, do a search on the web and you will get the general idea of how many opportunities you have to advertise for free.
The next area you are going to use on the net is to get some pages going on social networks. If you check them out, Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo are not just for people making googoo eyes at each other. Most of these sites also offer some type of classified ad but you would really rather go the route of developing your own page or pages that will catch the attention of perspective buyers. Take some time to explore these sites and you will get the general idea.
The last thing you are going to do is to start your own website. If you don't have the money to have someone develop it for you, you can start by using a blog. It will serve the same purpose initially and that purpose it to generate hits. People search for stuff all the time on the web and you just never know when your site will pop up.
Once you have your own site up you will also offer link exchanges with other bloggers and web sites. Do some searches in forums and blog sites and see who is popular. These sites don't necessarily have to be affiliated with what you are selling, actually for this, you would probably prefer that they were not. You are just trying to let people know about your business and this is a great way to do it.
You can use the same principle off of the net and do it with local businesses in your community. Go talk to your local merchants and work out deals to advertise each others businesses for free amongst yourself. People that buy hardware have to eat and vice versa. There is nothing wrong with a flyer by the register in either establishment promoting each other. You will be surprised at the amount of extra traffic your store sees by doing something as simple as that. - 16747
The scare factor of course is that if you don't get the word out about what you are selling, you are pretty much doomed to failure. You can only imagine how many great inventions are sitting in people's basements because it wasn't marketed right. We see businesses go down each and every day and you have to wonder was it bad business or lack of advertising?
What you need to do is take advantage of the free advertising that is available to each and every one of us. It will save you money and get the word out to as many people as possible. I am of course talking about the internet.
The first facet is to post on as many free classified sites as you can find that involve your particular business. There are some well know national ones like Craig's List but there are thousands of other ones too. If you have no knowledge of them, do a search on the web and you will get the general idea of how many opportunities you have to advertise for free.
The next area you are going to use on the net is to get some pages going on social networks. If you check them out, Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo are not just for people making googoo eyes at each other. Most of these sites also offer some type of classified ad but you would really rather go the route of developing your own page or pages that will catch the attention of perspective buyers. Take some time to explore these sites and you will get the general idea.
The last thing you are going to do is to start your own website. If you don't have the money to have someone develop it for you, you can start by using a blog. It will serve the same purpose initially and that purpose it to generate hits. People search for stuff all the time on the web and you just never know when your site will pop up.
Once you have your own site up you will also offer link exchanges with other bloggers and web sites. Do some searches in forums and blog sites and see who is popular. These sites don't necessarily have to be affiliated with what you are selling, actually for this, you would probably prefer that they were not. You are just trying to let people know about your business and this is a great way to do it.
You can use the same principle off of the net and do it with local businesses in your community. Go talk to your local merchants and work out deals to advertise each others businesses for free amongst yourself. People that buy hardware have to eat and vice versa. There is nothing wrong with a flyer by the register in either establishment promoting each other. You will be surprised at the amount of extra traffic your store sees by doing something as simple as that. - 16747
About the Author:
Alex Wu is fascinated by numbers and trading in marketplace. He wants to build a free advertising site that leverages the power of social network to facilitate business hiring in his free ads website.
