Small Business Advertising – Your Best Investments
Nobody needs advertising more than the small businessman. Unfortunately, none seem to afford it less than the small businessman. It may be that they don’t feel it will help their business, that such marketing methods are out of their league or budget, or that they just don’t know what to spend that advertising money on. The small businessman stands to benefit the most from advertising, and yet he’s often the least willing to do any of it. One could wonder why, since big businesses consistently demonstrate that advertising pays. They didn’t get to be big businesses by NOT getting the word out!
If you’re the owner of a small business, you may have spent money on print advertising, whether it was in the newspaper, via one of the several Yellow Pages around these days, or at a similar deal with a coupon mass-mailer. If you have, chances are you’ve been rather disappointed by the results. You pay for all those people, and most of them either don’t see your ad, don’t read it, or aren’t in the market! To make matters even worse, they don’t even remember you later when they DO need your goods or services! Don’t feel bad, the Small Business Administration agrees with your results. They’ve found a small fraction of the new customers coming through the door from print advertising. These days, it just doesn’t work.
What about radio and TV spots? Too expensive. Even if you have access to a public channel, the chances are you won’t have the kind of production value that is going to show your company off in a quality, professional light. Instead of increasing your business, you may actually harm it by coming off as unprofessional, amateurish – not the sort of impression you’ll want people to have of you!
What does work, then? Believe it or not, you’ve been looking at it every day you come in to your business, so much so that you’ve forgotten all about it. Your store front is your best advertisement. Those most likely to be your clients are those in the local area, and they’re driving past you by the thousands! What if you could get just ten percent of them to come inside and see what you’ve got to offer? They can’t see it from the street, with the front wall in the way. So how do you tell them what you’ve got? With a well made, professional sign!
It’s important that your sign have two things: An image that portrays what you’ve got to offer, and a clean-cut look. Don’t go rushing out to get a picture of your hamburger printed now. That’s not quite what you need. You see, when people are driving by, they’re doing at least 35 miles an hour and that’s just too fast to read much print or go studying the detail of a photo to find out what that picture is. What you need is an ICON – a representation that the eye will recognize in milliseconds. If you show them an icon of a fresh, juicy cheeseburger, they’ll recognize that immediately. If they’re hungry, you may be shocked, but they’ll literally slam on the brakes to come to your store and eat your burgers!
Over the years, few companies have gone out of their way to devise signs that really work. Most are just selling you a light box and some plastic. Make sure your sign is made by a professional organization, and made to last. Every day you don’t have it up, you’ll be losing money. Speaking of which, what are you waiting for? Customers are driving by right now with your money in their wallets!
