Today we’re going to talk about some proven, affordable, and effective ways to advertise your business. Advertising a business, service, or product, can be complicated, frustrating, and often times, disappointing. There are many factors that a person needs to consider before jumping into any advertising or marketing IDEA! There is a reason why some individuals spend countless hours studying, researching, going to school, and gaining experience, in order to strategize, create, and implement an effective advertising campaign.

In case you didn’t spend half of your life studying and practicing implementing advertising strategies, advertising techniques, online advertising, or outdoor advertising, we wanted to share with you some simple, yet extremely productive methods for getting results from your advertising.

The first line we need to divide is the one that intersects between large companies, and what we can call, “not-so-large” companies.

Large Companies

If you are in charge of a large corporation, firm, or agency, than you may want to consider infomercials. Depending on which types of products and services you offer, and of course the size of your budget, an infomercial may be the advertising stream that can take your business to the “next level.”

In this kind of economy, you basically have two people. The ones who are working all the time, and watching very little television, or the ones who are working very little, and watching tons of television. Either way, most people are watching television because they are worried about the economy, and majority of news stations help feed these people’s worry by supplying massive amounts of negative news, so they continue to watch television, both in hope for a better economy, and in addiction to human despair. Either way, as a business, you can benefit tremendously if you learn to profit from television.

Infomercials are beneficial if:

• You have a large enough budget.
• Research and planning are implemented sufficiently.
• You have a product to sell.
• You find the right station, time, and team to create the infomercial.

If you don’t have a product to sell, or infomercials are not attractive to you at this moment, another option is implementing a strong and targeted t.v. ad. Granted, infomercials ARE television ads. But instead of using an infomercial for you advertising stream, you could use google to create a custom t.v. advertising campaign. A well produced, edited, and filmed t.v. commercial, targeted at the right audience, could cost as little as $1000, and as much as $100,000+, and in turn, it can produce as low as $25 in profit, to as much as $1,000,000+.

Whichever route you decide is best for your company, you may want to consider reading below for additional options, because these guerilla marketing tactics apply for all shapes, sizes, and colors of companies.

“Not-so-large” Companies

Whether you have a small, medium, or growing size business, these proven modern advertising methods, which consist of different advertising techniques, can work for your company, if you choose to implement them.

One traditional, yet modern advertising method, is to implement printing products in an advertising campaign. Printing products such as business cards, postcards, flyers, brochures, and tent cards, have all provided large, medium, and small businesses with revenues exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars this past year alone.

Though every printing product has a campaign possibility, today we’re only going to talk specifically about postcard printing and postcard marketing. There are basically three sizes when it comes to postcards; small, medium, and large. Of course there’s many different specific sizes in-between, but we want to make it general for simplification purposes.

Large postcards

Large postcards, such as 6”x9”, require more up-front investment, but they tend to generate more new leads and clients due to the fact that it makes your prospects and clients encounter feelings of abundance. If you can make them feel abundance, you are one step closer to receiving their phone call.

Small postcards

Small postcards, 4”x6” for example, are another excellent source of marketing and advertising. They offer more “real estate” than a business card, they are cheaper than a door hanger, and they are memorable in the minds of your prospects and clients.

Graphic design

Once you’ve decided which size postcard is right for your company, the next step is to decide what kind of graphic design you would like to implement. You basically have two types of graphic design; template design, and custom graphic design. Somebody once showed me three business cards, from three totally different companies, that all had the exact same template design. If you don’t want to lose clients to your competition, than it is wise to always pay the extra price for custom graphic design. The short term price might be a little more than what you expected, but the long term cost will benefit you much more than any template design could ever do, plus you’ll get more clients over time who remember you just because of your designs.

Direct mail

Now that you have a postcard size, and postcard design, you can decide if direct mailing is right for you. The truth about direct mail is that you need a continuos monthly budget of at least $2,000-$5,000 to really market well and receive good results. Direct mailing postcards can be very profitable for your business, but without the right planning, organizing, financing, and executing, it can cause you more pain than gain.

Face to face marketing

This is what we could call guerilla marketing tactics. It is one of our modern advertising methods, and part of our creative advertising ideas. We didn’t invent this advertising method, but we are benefiting greatly from its results, and so can you. Face to face marketing, or guerilla marketing, works so well because your prospects get to deal with real people, and those real people get a chance to represent you company and earn a new sale.

Step 1. Hire a salesperson, or salespeople, to either work on commission, or be paid a decent wage of at least $10/hour.

Step 2. Give them your marketing style postcards, pick a territory for them to manage, and send them out between 4-6 hours per day. If your products are best fit for residential, they can deliver between 600-1000 postcards per day, per person. If your products or services are more targeted for businesses, than they can hand out between 100-300 postcards per day, depending on the area.

Step 3. Target the same area with at least three different promotions before moving on to the next area. If somebody is not home or in the office when your sales person is leaving a postcard, take a pad of sticky tabs with you and tape the postcard up on the door, or leave it inside the door crevice. You would be amazed at how many people call us months after we left a card in their door.

Step 4. Do it again, in a different area.

This guerilla marketing technique is such a powerful form of outdoor advertising, that within days, weeks, and months, you will cultivate a swift stream of continuos results. The key to becoming successful using this guerilla marketing technique is to be consistent, follow the plan, and implement the right promotional ideas.

Hopefully with these creative advertising ideas you can go out tomorrow and begin seeing positive results in your business. And if you need any assistance with advertising and marketing services, please give us a call.