Small Business Blog

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly attracted to Web marketing and, in particular, social media marketing. The appeal of online media is their low respective costs. When you own and operate a small, brick-and-mortar business, you face the marketing dilemma constantly: affordable options often lack scale. But the options with sizeable reach aren’t affordable and may be touching consumers who aren’t even viable targets. On top of that, successful ad campaigns these days often take repetition to make an impact. And repetition is expensive.

As an entrepreneur, you may weigh the costs of running print ads in your local newspaper and decide you’d rather take your chances with Twitter and Facebook–options which are free as long you have the available manpower. This decision may make sense from a financial perspective, but don’t make it lightly. Shifting all of your ad dollars to one medium is a mistake, unless you know for certain that that medium can reach all of your existing and target customers. Here’s some food for thought: in 2009, a poll on CNN.com indicated that 94 percent of CNN’s audience wasn’t using Twitter.

Now I know what you’re thinking…if you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know I’m a proponent of Twitter. But I’m not a proponent of putting all your eggs in the Twitter basket, the Facebook basket, or any other ad basket. Even if it may seem like all the world’s gone a-Twitter, there’s still a place for print, for cable, for radio. And actually, one of the most effective ways to use repetition in your advertising is by reaching the same customers through different media.

Of course, these days, you have to be creative with the dollars you direct towards traditional media. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Direct Mail: Find a vendor that does postcard printing and mailing. Print up some loyalty postcards to encourage repeat purchases and send them out. Consider putting a time limit on the card, such as, “make X number of purchases within X number of weeks” or something like that. Use what you know about your customers to set the number and time limit. For example, if you know that your typical customer makes three purchases from you every eight weeks, offer a discount or reward to those who make four purchases within eight weeks.

Newspaper Ads: Start a club. If you sell women’s clothes, start a women’s fashion club. Approach your local newspaper about covering the club and its activities. You should at least try to get a mention in the paper’s “upcoming events” section. Then run ads to complement the publicity. You will of course host the meetings in your store, but resist the temptation to hard-sell your members. Getting a group of potential customers into your store twice a month is the best kind of repetition there is.

Radio: Contact your local radio station and ask about opportunities to sponsor a contest or giveaway. Think about giving away something kwirky and unique. If you are willing to give away a sizeable prize, you should be able to get repeat mentions as the station builds up the contest.

Finally, remember that your best advertising opportunity happens when someone walks into your business looking for a product or service. If your budget is too tight for anything else, then focus on continually improving the customer experience.