To take advantage of today’s many streams of cheap and free advertising, you need to know your product or service and your market.
Understand who your customers are, what they want and target your promotions.
A brand expert can help small-to-medium businesses come to grips with the costs of marketing, strategy and advertising.
“You can’t pump all of your money into one thing and expect a fantastic return,” a Perth brand expert warns.
“It’s about doing a lot of things at one time: blogging, updating content on your website, using flyers and posting content on social media.”
The best advertising is word of mouth.
“A lot comes down to your staff and how you’re training them to speak to customers and deal with phone enquiries,” she says.
“Every interaction is a chance to advertise. The worst thing is to get an engaged customer who approaches the company and is turned away by a staff member who doesn’t know about your new ad or special.”
Ebong Eka, the author of Start Me Up! The No-Business-Plan Business Plan notes that demand has inflated keyword prices on Google Adwords but says you can economise by picking keywords at the bottom of the first page of a search.
“For instance, the word ‘plumber’ will come up first and be expensive, but further down the page are ‘plumbers supply’ and ‘plumbers jobs’. Those will be effective, yet less costly,” he says.
